Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Anna Akhmatova

print this page

Three Russian Poets

Mayakovsky in 1913

I never knew you in the days of your glory,
Your turbulent dawn in all I know;
But perhaps I’m qualified to tell your story
At last of that day from long ago.
The lines of your powerful verse were filled with
Strange new voices we’d never heard . . .
And your youthful hands were never still as
You raised up a terrible scaffold of words.
Whatever you touched was no longer the same as
The thing it had been before that time,
All that you censured and covered in shame was
Condemned to death in your thunderous lines.
So often alone and disaffected,
You impatiently tried to seep up fate,
For already you freely, gladly accepted
That soon you muct go and take part in the great
Struggle. And as you read an answer
Of rumbling dissent could be heard all round
And the angry rain eyed you askance as
You debated at length with the outraged town.
And now a name, unknown, obscure,
Was flashing around the stuffy hall,
And all through the land today it endures,
Reverberates still like a warrior’s call.

 

Stephen Capus studied Russian literature at the Universities of Birmingham and London. He has published poems and translations in various magazines, including Acumen and Thumbscrew. He currently works as an administrator at University College London.

Translated by Stephen Capus

Page(s) 232

Back to top