Second Lament

a translation -take 2

Где-то дом, напрокат там есть лица
Но в глазах не включается свет            
Только стрелки часов, как ресницы     
Каждый миг вытирают твой след.
                                                     
И везде зеркала, кинешь взор в них -
Видишь кадры чужого кино
И друзья говорят, как актеры, 
Что забыли все роли давно.

А под домом река ловит в невод 
Лунный свет, по пути в океан
И глухим остается к сиренам,
И немым, корабля капитан.

И в полуночи в доме мне снится
Как ты плачешь, забрав меня в плен
И замок скалит зубы-дразнится,
И таится мой стыд между стен

Искупленье -и выход, и путы
Ты, больнее бед, горше потерь -
Стань как нож, будь как чаша цикуты, 
Но моя, -и откроется дверь. 

************************

* this is my revisited translation of a great poem by Paul Wittenberger -you can find the original here.

**the first translation appears here.

Some of you might remember that the jury a.k.a me after long deliberation found it too “feminine”, for the lack of better word. The last stanza was especially problematic.

I tried to make it if not more “masculine”, then at least less “feminine”. In this, I mostly succeeded I think, also the dissonance between the beginning and the end of the poem is almost gone.

***Am I satisfied with it? I am not. Far from it. It took me days upon days, - and many things still elude me, and of others, I am unsure.

(See, I even started speaking like King Solomon. “Many things elude me, and of others, I’m unsure”.)

One could have added a stanza or two, it’d solve many a problem, and make it a much more exact translation.

But I do think it’d cause the poem to become too long, thus, loose its momentum. Momentums are important. Especially here, with a poem as musical as Paul’s.

So, as with the take 1, I had to choose what I stress -” just differently”.

(Speaking of stresses-the Russian word “замок” (zamok) can be read as “castle”, or as “lock”, depending which syllable is stressed. (zAmok or zamOk) Here, the stress falls on the second syllable, meaning “lock”.)

I could go on and on about the process -but I know that I myself am not always keen to read about processes.

There are always exceptions of course (hi, due to some mysterious Substack glitch I can’t underscore your names, but you know who you are, or so I hope.)

Let me know if you want me to go deeper, for I found it to be a particularly dizzying experience.

****Or you can just kill me обреченно сказал я. Here’s another way to tackle a problem))

Thank you, Paul, for your angelic patience -and for endless inspiration.

And thank you everybody for reading (and, hopefully, commenting).