kronstadt art residency Archives

The Trees by Nikolay Gumilev

Poet Nikolay Gumilev the husband of poet Anna Akhmatova, was born in Kronstadt and also later served here for a few years as an officer in the army in Kronstadt. This is one of my favourite poems of his.

I know: to the trees, but not to us, 
Perfection of the life is given, whole.
And on the Earth – the sister of the stars –
We live in exile, while they do at home. 

In latest falls, in sad and empty fields,
The red-brass dawns and amber-clad sunrises         
Teach to the hues, dissolved in thinnest films,
These people – green and free forever masses.

Moses exists among these oaks, tall,
And Mary, too – among the palms for ages … 
Their souls send to the others quiet calls
With waters, run in darkness, void of edges.  

While polishing and brushing stony gems,
And grinding rocks, the springs babble in a chore:
They sing a song, or mourn a broken elm,
Or praise the leaves, which dressed a sycamore.  

Oh, if I might be ever blessed to find
The place, where, lost of singing and bewailing,  
I would rise silently up to the heaven height
For the millenniums, unending.

Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, May, 2000
Edited by Dmitry Karshtedt, December, 2000

Lost words

Notebook May 3rd – Kronstadt, St Petersburg

Today I wrote a poem, sitting between the pigeons.

It went something like this…?

I wrote it on the back of my lost luggage customs form.

News finally came from Polcovo and I went to collect my orphaned suitcase.

Handing in my official form, now stamped with red bureaucracy circles,

forgetting about the poem penned on the back of it.

Sign here, sign here and sign here and yes you need to sign there.

Now my lonely words are afloat in the Russian ocean of

duplicate forms of black-pen-only frantic tourist scribbles.

The pigeons are still here but the words departed on a one way ticket.