By Leo Loseff (a Literary Friend of Brodsky)

Two English Poetic Translations, by Anna Polibina-Polansky

* * *

("Poezd polzyot cherez lug sipya...")

So the train is crawling across the grass,

So it moans under the rain, as it pass

The haystock up fiddled. I have to compose

Two lines of the life with which I can't boast.

So at falls the windows are enough

To make brows cold. Oh, this rain is rough.

And I linger to compose of love

And of the lady in black, of its hasty doves.

So, poetizer, do darn what is worth

Darning. Your verses abide on the earth.

But whatever you say, it is reminding barking.

And the whaling dogs are freed, in the darkness.

It is as if the soul is blankly freed.

Sir, moaning and singing both come from your breed.

Oh sir, your are precise as now you are dead.

Oh sir, though up fed, uuter words, instead!

1997-2000, New York/tr. 2020, Moscow

* * * Out of Bunin. Dedicated to Nina

("Priletyat grachi, uletyat grachi...")

So the larks will come, so the larks will fly.

Oh, the plumby cross spreads your loaded light.

So handle to those gloomy landscapes dark,

Your photo from the passport, greyish and stark.

For your silence eternal, angel have applied.

Silence is up coming. A sigh's like a sin.

So the nights are uniting us tightly, since

Starry paws have become branches of pine-trees.

Heaving graves, are all "thanks to" and never "inspite of".

The 2000s/tr. 2020