Droplets
Pearly droplets, beautiful droplets,
How lovely you are in the golden rays,
And how sad you are, inclement droplets,
On wet windows in a black autumn.
People, living in merry oblivion,
How grand you appear in others’ eyes
And how pitiful you are in the dark of decline.
No consolation for you in the world of the living.
Autumn droplets, how much sadness
You inspire in the heavy soul.
Quietly you slide across glass, meandering,
As though looking for something merry.
Wretched people, undone by life,
In pain you live out your days,
Calling back again and again the lovely
Bygone time you will never forget.
<1912>
* * * * *
I will not lie to myself,
Woe has settled in my misty heart.
Why am I known as a charlatan?
Why am I known as a brawler?
I’m not a villain. I haven’t robbed anyone in the forest.
I haven’t shot wretches in dungeons.
I’m merely a street rake
Smiling at passing faces.
I’m a mischievous Moscow playboy.
In Tver, every neighborhood dog
Recognizes my breezy gait
In the backstreets.
Every bedraggled horse
Nods its head to greet me.
I’m a good friend to the animals,
Healing them with my verses.
My top hat is not to impress the women.
My heart can’t bear meaningless passion.
It makes it easier, soothing my sadness,
To give gold oats to a mare.
I have no friends among people.
I’m loyal to a different kingdom.
I’m ready to put my best tie
On the neck of any local hound.
Now I won’t hurt any longer.
Swamp is drained in my murky heart.
This is why I’m known as a charlatan.
This is why I’m known as a brawler.
<1922>
* * *
I have only one amusement left:
Fingers in my mouth — and a merry whistle.
I’ve acquired the ill fame
Of a hustler and a scandal-monger.
Ah! what a funny loss!
There are many funny losses in life.
I’m ashamed that I used to believe in God.
I’m bitter that now I don’t.
Golden, faraway distances!
The bleakness of life burns all.
I sinned and brawled
Only to shine brighter.
The gift of a poet is to caress and to scratch.
He bears a fateful stamp.
I wanted to marry a white rose
To a black toad on this earth.
Perhaps these rose-colored plans
Didn’t pan out, didn’t come true.
But if demons nested in my soul,
That means angels lived there too.
It’s for this joy of chaos
That, at the last minute
Before I depart for another world,
I want to ask all who will be with me
To reward me for all my sins,
For my lack of belief in grace,
By laying me down, in a Russian shirt,
To die under the icons.
<1923>
* * * * *
Maple without leaves, maple covered in ice,
Why do you stand, slumped down, under the white blizzard?
Did you see something? Hear something?
It’s as if you’ve gone out for a walk outside the village
And, like a drunken guard out on the road,
Tumbled into a snowdrift and froze a leg.
Ah, these days I’m not so steady myself.
Headed back from drinking with friends, I won’t reach home.
Here I met a willow; there I met a pine.
In the howling blizzard I sang them songs of summer.
I seemed to be the same sort of maple myself,
Except I am completely green, not leafless.
And, three sheets to the wind, lost to decorum,
I hugged a birch as if it were another man’s wife.
<1925>
* * *
You don’t love me, you don’t pity me.
Am I not in the least bit beautiful?
Not looking at my face, you tremble with passion
With your hands on my shoulders.
Young one with your sensual smile,
I’m not tender with you, nor rude.
Tell me, how many have you caressed?
How many hands do you remember? How many lips?
I know — they’ve all passed like shadows,
Never touching your heat.
You sat on many knees,
And now you’re sitting on mine.
So what if your eyes are half-closed
And you’re thinking of someone else?
Drowning in faraway memories,
I don’t love you that much myself.
Don’t call this ardor fate.
Shallow is this fiery liaison—
Just as I met you by accident,
I will part from you with a smile.
You’ll continue on your own path
Burning through your joyless days.
Just don’t touch the unkissed,
Don’t lure the unburned.
When you’re walking with someone else
Down an alley, chatting of love,
Perhaps I too will go out for a walk
And we will meet again.
Turning your shoulders closer to him,
Your head a little bowed,
You will quietly say to me, “Good evening …”
I will answer, “Good evening, miss.”
And nothing will rattle the soul,
Nothing will make it tremble —
Who has loved cannot love again,
Who has burned cannot be set on fire.
<1925>
* * * * *
Anton Yakovlev on translating Yesenin’s poetry:
Sergei Yesenin (1895-1925) grew up in a peasant family in the village of Konstantinovo, Ryazan Province but spent most of his adult life in Petrograd (previously St. Petersburg, later Leningrad). Yesenin called himself “the last poet of the village,” both in the sense of his peasant origins and of being the last among his contemporaries whose poems were mainly concerned with country life. In writing, sometimes nostalgically, always sympathetically, and often with an almost mystical devotion to rural Russia, Yesenin succeeded in cultivating a national identity and mythology so strong and cohesive that his work would forever imprint itself into Russian culture, with the poet becoming a beloved and somewhat mythical figure — a fame that persisted even under Stalin when the poet’s work was blacklisted and wen praising or even reading it constituted a risk to one’s very survival. A founding member of the short-lived but influential Imaginist movement (related to the Western Imagism and standing in contrast to Futurism), Yesenin was a star whose public performances were attended by hundreds or thousands of adoring fans across the country. He jousted with Vladimir Mayakovsky and was known for publicity stunts. His iconic status continues to this day; it is virtually impossible to find a Russian person who has never heard Sergei Yesenin’s name, and only marginally easier to find someone who doesn’t know at least one of his poems by heart. Yesenin was unhappily married three times; his second wife was Isadora Duncan, and his third wife was the granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy.
As a translator, I usually take the perspective of someone who has just read a powerful, possibly life-changing poem and is compelled to convey that experience to a person who does not speak the language. First and foremost, I want the words to be accurate, to communicate what the author was trying to convey, as opposed to my paraphrases. Second, I want to capture the energy of the poem, which includes metrical and musical resemblance. I have found, especially in translating Yesenin’s precise and often slightly unusual imagery, that trying to rework the poems to retain exact meter and rhyme results in strained language and too much departure from the original meaning. So my translations are not strictly metrical or rhymed. That said, I aim to maintain some metrical resemblance, albeit with deviations; a translation of a poem written in iambic tetrameter will not have the same rhythm as a translation of a poem in amphibrachic trimeter. Much of my revision process involves reworking the rhythm and the line lengths to get closer to the originals, while taking as few liberties as possible with the original imagery and ideas.
—From the Translator’s Preface to The Last Poet of the Village: Selected Poems of Sergei Yesenin Translated by Anton Yakovlev
Note: “I have only one amusement left” originally appeared in The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow. “I will not lie to myself” originally appeared in Revol.