“A Tragicomic Read”
English translation by Danil Rudoy from a Russian poem by Alexander Bashlachev
The clock has stopped at one o’clock.
To lie in bed, it is so boring!
Too bad that alcohol that’s pouring
Can’t save us from this dead old lock.
The springs of couch but squealing bleed,
The scratching sound of mice is steady…
Why don’t we both wake up and then get ready
To write a tragicomic read?
Why don’t we make a plot anew,
Which will allow for our existence,
In which, engaged in fun on every distance,
We’d spend at least a year or two.
Much to the envy of the rest,
I’ll love you with breathtaking passion,
When my damn running nose goes out of fashion,
As well as boredom and the pests.
It shall be on the oceans’ shores
That we will find a bay of ours,
And we won’t have to, for eternal hours,
Consider money and the chores.
No need to think of guilt and wine,
To gather wood to feed the furnace.
Forget of future fighting, lest they’ll spurn us:
Bears, lions – best friends of yours and mine.
No borders cross the magic land,
And we shall never drop our feathers.
What’s more to us than truths’ dark, nasty weathers?
A tricky read that lends a hand!
And thus, we’re writing: to approach
Most inconceivable of marvels!
While up the pile of dirty towels
Is crawling quite a whiskered roach.
English translation by Danil Rudoy — 2012
Publication
This English translation appears in Love Is Poetry: Rhyming Poems About Love Life. The collection places the translation among Rudoy’s English verse and preserves Alexander Bashlachev’s authorship of the original work.
Alexander Bashlachev
Alexander Bashlachev (1960–1988) was a Russian poet and songwriter whose work joined lyric intensity, satire, colloquial speech and the performance culture of Soviet rock. Rudoy’s translation brings one of Bashlachev’s comic love poems into English while keeping its quick rhymes, domestic absurdity and deliberately unheroic ending in view.
Continue with Poetry by Danil Rudoy and Rhyming Poetry.