[Carl Copeland]

This poem has similarities to one written seven years earlier: https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=35458. Pushkin may be comparing the burial site of his dear friend Anton Delvig outside St. Petersburg with the monastery graveyard in Pskov Province where his mother had been buried a few months before. He would be buried near her six months later. It’s interesting to consider that public cemeteries—not in churchyards—were a relatively new invention.


When, wandering beyond the city’s bounds,
I find myself in public burial grounds—
the fancy tombs and fences topping all
the rotting corpses of the capital,
crowded haphazardly in a morass,
like guests all grasping at a poor repast,
the merchants’ and officials’ sepulchers,
a third-rate chisel’s graceless twists and swirls,
inscriptions telling, both in prose and verses,
of virtues, titles and official service;
a cuckold’s widow amorously weeping;
the urns unscrewed by pilferers, the seeping
of mucky graves left yawning on the day
before their residents move in to stay—
it’s all so troubling and engulfs my mind
in such black desolation that I find
I want to spit and flee …
                                   But oh, how fond
I am of an ancestral burial ground
on quiet autumn evenings, where I sense
the peaceful dignity of those at rest.
The graves there, unadorned, have ample room;
at night, pale thieves won’t desecrate a tomb;
a passing villager, with prayers and sighs,
regards the headstones’ mossy yellow sides;
instead of urns, small pyramids and faces
of noseless spirits and bedraggled Graces,
an oak spreads out above the stately graves
and rustles as it sways …


Crib

When, pensive, I roam outside the city
and stop in a public cemetery,
the fences, headstones, [and] fancy graves
beneath which rot all the dead of the capital,
haphazardly crowded side-by-side in a swamp,
like famished/greedy guests at a beggarly table,
mausoleums of deceased merchants, officials,
the outlandish fancies of a cheap chisel,
[and] above them, inscriptions in prose and verses
on virtues, on [state] service and ranks;
a widow’s amorous lament for an old cuckold;
urns unscrewed from headstones by thieves,
slimy graves that are also here,
yawning, wait for tenants in the morning—
it all brings on for me such troubling thoughts
that foul/evil despair comes over me.
One wants to spit and flee ...
                                          But how pleasing for me
in autumn, in the quiet of evening
in the country, to visit an ancestral graveyard,
where the dead slumber in stately peace.
There the unadorned graves have room;
a pale thief won’t disturb them on a dark night;
near the age-old stones covered with yellow moss,
a villager passes with a prayer and a sigh;
in place of empty urns and small pyramids,
noseless geniuses, [and] bedraggled Graces,
an oak broadly stands over the dignified/important graves,
swaying and making sound ...


Original

Когда за городом, задумчив, я брожу
И на публичное кладбище захожу,
Решетки, столбики, нарядные гробницы,
Под коими гниют все мертвецы столицы,
В болоте коё-как стесненные рядком,
Как гости жадные за нищенским столом,
Купцов, чиновников усопших мавзолеи,
Дешевого резца нелепые затеи,
Над ними надписи и в прозе и в стихах
О добродетелях, о службе и чинах;
По старом рогаче вдовицы плач амурный;
Ворами со столбов отвинченные урны,
Могилы склизкие, которы также тут,
Зеваючи, жильцов к себе на утро ждут, —
Такие смутные мне мысли все наводит,
Что злое на меня уныние находит.
Хоть плюнуть да бежать...
                                        Но как же любо мне
Осеннею порой, в вечерней тишине,
В деревне посещать кладбище родовое,
Где дремлют мертвые в торжественном покое.
Там неукрашенным могилам есть простор;
К ним ночью темною не лезет бледный вор;
Близ камней вековых, покрытых желтым мохом,
Проходит селянин с молитвой и со вздохом;
На место праздных урн и мелких пирамид,
Безносых гениев, растрепанных харит
Стоит широко дуб над важными гробами,
Колеблясь и шумя...