Speaking In Tongues
Scribbling In Voices

Alexander Vertinsky

Translated by Boris Garbuzov

Translation 1995-2001 by Boris Garbuzov



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A Minute

It's time to part, I say, Goodbye.
One minute and I'll leave.
I wouldn't love you, I don't lie,
Forgive me, please, forgive.
Forgive me that you were before
My lover and my wife,
For I could let you burn me or
You took my peaceful life.
For all the times we were apart,
In every passing day
We burnt each other's frozen heart
In such a lofty way.
Receive my thanks and my regret.
One minute, and I'll leave.
Your name won't ever I forget.
Forgive me, please, forgive.
I've become
So melancholy.
Do not cry.
By this morning,
Sweetest morning,
I shall die.

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To the Cadets

I don't know for what
And for whom it is needed,
Who dispatched them for death
With unquivering arm,
But it was so useless,
So cruel and evil,
When they put them forever to calm.

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* * *

To the cape of joy, to the rocks of sorrow,
To the islands of lavender light,
All the same where we finally shore,
We can't raise our weary sight.
In the blurred glass of illuminator
Golden gardens will slowly pass,
Sun of tropics, palms of equator,
Azure mountains of polar ice.
All the same where we finally shore,
To the islands of lavender light,
To the cape of joy, to the rocks of sorrow,
We can't raise our weary sight.




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, Nuit de Noel.


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, Nuit de Noel.


1925,

EVIL PERFUME (1)



I'm dispatching a letter again slightly touching with kisses its pages.
And releasing your evil perfume, toxic air I gladly inhale.
Then it calls me to clearly see birds abandoning love through the ages.
Black and slender, they fly southward, from the flask of Nuit de Noel.


Spring is coming apace, and Venetian young violinists
Will sing out your grief, dance away your despair and gloom.
Then blue faults will be easy to pass and our sins will be light and diminish.
Do not spare your kiss in spring season when almond trees break into bloom.


Don't be missing me long, my friend. I'm a gloomy and frozen creature,
At command of my rigorous master I'm dancing and tending to weep
While withdrawing your tickets of fortune, I am seeing your hopeless features
And to tedious moans of an organ I am helplessly falling asleep.


Here comes fair spring. Soon the frozen slush will be drying,
And primroses, violets, dreams will be blooming afield.
But we can't come to spring just by songs, and we can't come to spring just by crying.
With the organ we got careworn and already despairingly ill.


I am sending a letter again slightly touching with kisses its pages.
Don't be sad for the dismal finale and for poisoned words that I tell.
It's your evil perfume and my thoughts, black as birds leaving love through the ages.
From the bottle they fly southward, from the scent of Nuit de Noel.


1. Translated by Boris Garbuzov, Vancouver, and Kate Savostianova, St. Petersburg, October, 2001.