Poetic-Verses from ATHANASE
Ode To Russian Poetry
'Clear night, bright shadows.'
F.I. Tutchev (1803-1873)
I was the child of your celestial music, O poetry of the North;
day and night my loving mother rocked my cradle
where, large and innocent, the dizzying stars,
friends of souls, waters and sleep,
illuminated me where I lay.
O journey of the heart from eternity to pure eternity!
Birds ineffably joined with light!
O glorious poetry, you clothed
my fragile hands with swirling snow,
great drifts of snow going east,
solemn as wild geese flying free,
with leaves of delicate silver birch as sensitive to the kisses of the breeze
as a divine soul to the murmurs of angels;
you covered my heart with the time-showered ripples of the steppes,
with snowdrops of an Attic whiteness, with blackberry, mint and lilac,
with crimson peonies, light floating roses, flowering lupines.
Naming things makes me one with their souls!
An ocean into which the presence of God hurls itself,
a sublime daring that I have to fill with kisses!
O my soul, must everything good and pure in me
causes me suffering so I can be worthy?
O poetry of the North, you made my heart burst
until it reached the vast dimensions of perfect love!
You entered, O crystal clear poetry, into the avenues of my thoughts
as night came running like a shepherd over rivers,
over pastures, with a heart of gold, of song, of blueberries!
You filled my adolescent flesh with your subtle warmth,
my hands with verses brighter than the bright dawn,
with feelings purer than the purity of the air!
I shivered with emotion carried on the fiery wings
of clear-sighted fireflies.
Ripe was the wheat under your caress, and fresh the friendly earth
when, O divine poetry, your lips touched my head!
How fire sleeps endlessly in every poem!
How my tender life is possible only because I live with words!
O you, souls of the music of words, souls at the end of all my gestures,
I love you, O souls, and I will never let time grow tired and fall asleep
but will keep my mission of faith to the gentle faces of the future!
O feverish song of the Russian people,
you revealed, revealed to my anxiety
the sublime face of Christ, my God and loving Lord,
the shrill bells of his divine words, that essence
tasted only by those creatures of love and hope with
the golden-yellow image of goodness floating deep in their eyes.
O Christ of mine, Christ to whom all time bows and runs!
You showed me the way to heaven,
you taught me the seraphic art of knowing how to love even the days without light,
the hours devoid of mercy,
the much-mourned books, the wounded altars,
the murdered priests and the silence of the just,
the singing of seeds in the shadows of the earth!
O song, harvester of the depths!
O poetry of the North, skies for ever moving, herds of horses on fire,
perpetual music weighty and true
like the entrails of an always fertile sea,
like fierce storms, fast roads and trembling forests,
lakes of linen and skies without shadow!
Voices, voices, O lily voices, sublime light made of light,
an unction that teaches us the whole;
come voices marked with God's stigmata
and put your songs of plenitude
into my eyes, into my love, into the hour
of bitter cries, into my soul open
to the caresses of aspens, to the gold of primroses:
Pushkin of the graces and Lermontov of the lilies,
Koltsov of the steppes and Tutchev full of ecstasy,
tender Blok lover of Christ and Mandelstam the maker of phrases
where time bleeds and resurrects the roses ,
Akhmatova of the wounds, Yessenin of Russia,
dawn lily-of-the-valley among my childish tears,
and Khlebnikov whose dreams curled at the feet of words,
Balmont's vertigo, Tsvetayeva's claws!...
Ivanov the lascivious Magus of the learned,
Pasternak of the pines, the strawberries, the jackdaws,
and you, my exquisite angel, Vladimir Mayakovsky,
Herald of Hope and the Book of Infinity!
You, souls of light and witnesses of the Heavens,
voices of great gentleness that made my voice
the sweet ship sailing into the fires
of the Milky Way and the Face of God!
Now, O poetry of freedom, you have become this peerless holy silence
that sweetly fills my blood, blossoming
with sounds, tears, joy and fruit,
with words of pure gold, visions, stanzas,
parables deeply and heavily transparent,
vibrant, fertile and bright as the tree of silence
that binds my heart to the lips of the sky!
translated into French by Norton Hodges
10th May 2005
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Ode To Russian Poetry
Ode To Russian Poetry
