Επιμέλεια: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού
SPRING
RENEWAL
The stone is overgrown with grass.
The sounding forest renews colours,
and spring trembles in leaves
sharing warmth like among brothers.
The blue distances lower
under the heaviness of birds’ flocks…
Here it is alongside – my beloved country –
my joys and sadnesses!
GREEN MOSQUES
Morning. Warm and calm.
Windoiw half open.
Something is given me from above
but by whose will?
I recognise myself in children,
I cherish the shelter.
I hear birds of poaradise
are singing in the green mosques.
BIRTH OF SPRING
With the usual words
into everyday life
I return again,
to morning in the darkness.
Farwell snow lies
on the peaks of the Kremlin…
This is how spring
is born in my city.
SONG OF THE RAINWATER PIPE
Like the stilled day
the pipe fell asleep on the breast of the building.
The sacrificial pipe’s love
stretched from roof to pavement.
Nothing was left
to need to endure.
Life inhaled
the cold breath of indifference.
Then in the dark, tired from the humdrum day,
the rain crept in smelling of snow.
The impossibility of happiness resulted
in the singing of the rainwater pipe.
THE SHARP EDGE OF NIGHT
The doors of doorways are silent
like old gypsy women
who’ve forgotten how to tell
fortunes.
Triumphal shadows
tear the necklaces
of silver streetlamps
of the streets that are falling asleep.
In the viscous darkness of worries
my piercing window
and eyes are full of the breath
of sticky leaves.
Only there, ahead
over the sleeping Kazan river,
a very young crescent moon
is on the sharp edge of night.
SUMMER
RUNNING AWAY FROM DAWN
Dawn breaks. The fugitive
lies with his eyes open.
Everything approaches for an age
and goes off into the distance with the years.
He covers his face with his palms
as though he’s afraid of the light,
he softly breathed out these words:
‘I have nowhere left to run.’
ON THE SHORE OF ABSOLUTE WORDLESSNESS
Midday pours out
the sunny light on the earth
from the golden udder
of a heavenly cow.
The wind strokes
its rain-soaked flanks.
Flat-chested little horses
descend the steep
slope of the hill.
Heat has thrown out on the shore
a lazy bunch of people relaxing.
The world is full of happiness.
MIDDAY
Sun, like a white-hot executioner’s block
rises slowly
over the alarmed smooth of the river.
The water seethes
in the iron arteries of the city.
People look in
at the damp eyes of the shops.
A breeze lazily goes through
the multicoloured beads of umbrellas.
The dome of Peter and Paul’s blazes,
like a freshly baked Easter cake.
The last shadows disappear
on the windblown, rough
face of the city,
and the thirst of eternity comes out
on the stone lips of the embankment.
Midday.
I live in it.
THE RING ROUTE
Darkness of silence,
touched with fleeting waiting,
descended on the shadows of the city.
Gaunt lime trees
with swollen nipples
fed the cool of the night.
The ring route
returned the tormented body
to healing worries of everyday life.
And I wanted to taste
provincial life of an embankment
without trams.
NEARTO OUR PAST
Near to our past
the wind scratched the rainy shadows.
I was trying to overcome the turning
to my memories.
The naked shoulders of streetlamps,
covered with green fur,
reminded me of Kazan
in its golden age.
A ragamuffin-stone carelessly
rolled down the steep slope of the shore
into the fond embrace
of the unknown.
AUTUMN
MEMORIES GROW OUT OF THE CRIES OF BIRDS
I love white-faced Kazan,
whose feet
are washed by life-giving waters,
a Kremlin kissed by snow
still fragrant with autumn foliage
and the proliferation of the squares
like passionate farewells,
and the freckled houses
under the manes of silver poplars,
and the devout luminescence
of city streetlamps,
and people
grandly carrying their past
and the cries of birds
from which grow –
our memories.
LEAF FALL OF A PERFECT AUTUMN
The branches rocked coldly
their weakened leaves
and knocked at the neighbours’ windows
with their hands trembling from cold.
The abandoned little courtyard
dozed on the outskirts of summer.
The autumn caretaker, lost in thought,
swept the streets before dawn.
RETURN TO WAKING
The platform dozed in the chilled blue.
A shadow wandered on slender legs.
The carriage left in the blind siding
was rocked by all the winds.
Lonely snow was hastening
to leave tracks on the soaked earth.
A man was going off somewhere urgently.
OLD FLAT
The same old flat
with a sleepy door in the corridor,
with timid steps of light,
soaked in the rainy midday.
The same old flat
and the damp wallpaper
and the wind with slender arms
blows through the cracks behind the blind.
The same old flat,
in which I once lived,
in which I’ll live again,
in which I’ll never once die.
NEWBORN HAPPINESS
I muddle the track in the new constructions
like a blind foal in the dawn forest.
Night squeezes its engagement ring
into small change.
On the fabled back of the Kazan river
the Kremlin has opened up like a pink lotus.
Newborn happiness
flows its petals down like a teardrop of joy.
Ahead there are indistinguishable silhouettes
of man and a woman –
soaked leaves
of one tree.
WINTER
THE TRANSFIGURATION
To survive the bad
and preserve joy…
Night breaks speech
like a slender thread,
I search for a place for the night,
I go into the cold forest.
The transfigured snow
descends from the skies.
PERHAPS
Perhaps the blue evening
plaits the twigs into braids?
Perhaps the first hoarfrost
makes its marks?
Perhaps our souls can’t
have a drink in another world?
Perhaps there’s no dry land
for them to land on?
NIGHT GONE OFF INTO THE PAST
The night going off into the past
was grey as the predawn dark.
Shadows of unrepentant trees
fragmented the houses into slight fragments.
The old trees carried off into the unknown
the usual emptiness.
It twinkled, the tiny flame of a mourning cigarette
thrown in the half-dark of the stone city.
In the closed space of shamelessness
hearts that had fed, pulsed.
The world continued to part with the past, setting light
to the innocent windows of sleeping lighthouses.
FLIGHT INTO TROUBLED INFINITY
I search for my half ghostly image
in the city of winter rains.
And it stares at me
through the smoke of new days.
When we accept, we don’t value eternity,
we don’t know how to go further.
Will we have something personal?
Are we capable of love?
HOAR-FROST
Green embraces stretch
to my cold window.
Streetlamps, like brothers,
stretched out in single file.
It’s standing in the same place,
my house, orphaned without me.
How long now will we live, no longer together,
without waking or light.
How long to be sad and not say farewell,
growing into the past from outside?
I’m going away, so as to return
with the hoar-frost on my dear window.
Transfer Richard McCain
Olga Levadnaya is a world-famous Russian poet of Russia, Honored Worker of Culture of the Republic of Tatarstan (2008), laureate of all-Russian and international literary awards (2007-2022), member of Russian and international writers’ unions (1997-2022), Ambassador of Peace (2021), member of the Eurasian Assembly (2023), artistic director of the Kazan Poetry Theater “Dialogue”, creator and director of the Interregional Music and Poetry Festival “Handshake of the Republics” (2017-2023).
Author of books: “I live in anticipation of snow” (1992), “Go through the vicious circle” (1998), “In free fall up” (in Russian and Tatar, 2003), “Close to our past” (2003), “Rising on the ladder of thoughts” (2005), “Memories grow from the cry of birds” (in Russian, English, Tatar and Turkish, 2005), “Stargate” (2010), “Wind of the heart” (2014), “Vocal works on verses Olga Levadnaya” (2020), “Selected” in two volumes (2022), “Wind of the Heart” (in Russian and Tatar, India, 2022), “Wind of the Heart” (in Tatar, USA, 2022), “Turkish Tales “(in Russian and Turkish, Turkey, 2022), “Climbing the Stairs of Thought” (in Russian and English, India, USA, 2023), “Turkish Tales” (in Russian and Turkish, India, USA, 2023), “Selected” in 2 volumes (India, USA-2023).
