THREE POEMS
Gorbanevskaya, Natalya
These poems are reprinted from Natalya Gorbanevskaya, translated and edited by Daniel Weissbort, with a transcript of her trial and papers relating to her detention in a prison psychiatric...
...I am roasting over a slow fire...
...Nothing at all happens — neither fear, nor stiffening before the executioner: I let my head fall on the hollowed block, as on a casual lover's shoulder...
...But this brief moment of oblivion ends, the human bird falls silent and again, barefoot over broken glass, we enter the emptiness, the blizzard and the dai A star from the heavens, an enchanting sonnet, nothing will beguile you anymore, and "Sleep peacefully," you will murmur and silently cry, "There's no peace left...
...in all this glassy sea of suffering the only saving grace is music...
...The book, copyright © 1972 by Daniel Weissbort (introduction and translation of poems) and Dr...
...Another day dawns sunless, and in the twilight, half awake, or suffering from some old fever or some new apocrypha, my casual lover's shoulder still smells to me of pine shavings...
...19425...
...Cursing alien rooms, I hang about alien lobbies...
...Only music, nothing else, is left — neither happiness, nor peace, nor freedom...
...But who will put a window in the wall...
...Roll, curly head, over the planed boards, don't get a splinter in your parted lips the boards bruise your temples, the solemn fanfare sounds in your ears, the polished copper dazzles the eyes, the horses' manes toss — 0, what a day to die on...
...In my own twentieth century where there are more dead than graves to put them in, my miserable, forever unshared love among these Goya images is nervous, faint, absurd, as, after the screaming of jets, the trump of Jericho...
...These poems are reprinted from Natalya Gorbanevskaya, translated and edited by Daniel Weissbort, with a transcript of her trial and papers relating to her detention in a prison psychiatric hospital...
...Who'll stretch a hand out to me...
...100...
...Don't touch me...
...Sidney Crown (comments on the case of N. E. Gorbanevskaya), was published by Carcanet Press Limited, and is distributed in the United States by Dufour Editions Inc., Chester Springs, Pa...
...I scream at passers-by — they don't notice me...
...Yes, for an hour or maybe more, where there is neither past nor future, in the depths of winter a flute sings like the woodland oriole of summer...
Vol. 22 • April 1975 • No. 2
