[Carl Copeland]

I discovered this 1912 poem and the poet too because of the mysterious “red breath” in L20, which Mandelstam used, just as mysteriously, in his 1932 poem “Lamarck.” At the time of writing, Mikhail Zenkevich (1886-1973) was allied with the Acmeists, a disparate group including Gumilev, Akhmatova and Mandelstam. In the Soviet period, he published mainly translations, especially of American poetry.


The sky, a swollen udder, squirts
forth its burning noonday yield
into fissures in dry fields,
beating down in flaming spurts.
Till their ears are ringing loud
and their noses start to bleed,
boys keep splashing in the reeds
where the river widens out.
Tending to the oven, crones,
heedless of the graveyard’s call,
climb inside it, whisks and all,
and on ashes steam their bones.
Apprehensive ears are pricked—
trained on fiery liquid peace—
for the ghostly fumes’ next trick:
if the oven overheats,
then the stew of crones will stick;
or a boy out of his depth,
turned cadaver blue, will bloat;
or, from dusty bells, red breath
will utter an alarming note.


Edits
L1: like someone’s > a swollen
L7: kids > boys
L8: deepens > widens
L18: kids > boys


Crib

The sky, like someone’s/something’s udder,
pours its noonday yield
into cracks in the dry earth
in fiery streams.
And until, ears ringing,
blood starts dripping from the nose,
kids keep splashing in the rushes
by a deep stretch in the river.
And old ladies, forgetting
to lie down in the churchyard,
climb into the oven with whisks/besoms*
to steam their bones on the ashes.
And anxiously the hearing catches (listens for),
in the liquid, fiery peace/stillness,
how the carbon monoxide spirit will act up:
the stew of baked old ladies
will burn on the bottom;
or, taking a dip, one of the kids
will swell into a blue corpse.
Or an alarm will sound, with its red breath,
on a dusty bell.

* Bathers in Russian banyas and Finnish saunas thrash each other with whisks of leafy birch branches as a fragrant massage.


Original

Небо, словно чье-то вымя,
В трещины земли сухой
Свой полуденный удой
Льет струями огневыми.
И пока, звеня в ушах,
Не закаплет кровь из носа,
Все полощатся у плеса
Ребятишки в камышах.
А старухи, на погосте
Позабывшие залечь,
Лезут с вениками в печь
На золе распарить кости.
И тревожно ловит слух —
В жидком огненном покое
Чем чудит угарный дух:
Пригорит в печи жаркое
Из запекшихся старух;
Иль, купаясь, кто распухнет
В синий трупик из ребят.
Иль дыханьем красным ухнет
В пыльный колокол набат.




A 1913 pencil sketch by Sergei Gorodetsky of a Poet’s Workshop (Acmeist) meeting. Pictured are Nikolai Klyuev, Mikhail Lozinsky, Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Zenkevich.