Nikolay Zabolotsky (1903-1958).

      

      Zabolotsky was an early member of OBERIY and a friend of Harms and suffered its miserable fate together with most other members. He survived the Gulag but died shortly thereafter. His symbolic significance was that he repeated the trajectory of the Russian poetry. Being a modernist in Leningrad -- St. Petersburg before the camps, he became a neo-classicist in Moscow after World War II. His uniqueness was that he was equally good in both styles. For Boris Pasternak his futurist period was only a preparation for his neo-classical poetry. For Kirsanov and Selvinsky, their official poetry was Stalinist garbage, which they wrote to conform to the Party directives and receive state pensions, while they were modernists in the thick. But Zabolotsky's neo-classical period was as significant as his modernist and nearly as good. 

Болезнь

Больной, свалившись на кровать
Руки не может приподнятью
Вспотевший лоб прямоуголен --
Больной двенадцать суток болен.

Во сне он видит чьи-то рыла,
Тупые, плотные, как дуб.
Тут лошадь веки приоткрыла,
Квадратный выставила зуб. 

Она грызет пустые склянки,
Склонившись Библию читает,
Танцует, мочится в лоханки
И голосом жены больного утешает. 

"Жена, ты девушкой слыла,

Увы, моя подруга, 

Как кожа нежная была

В боках твоих упруга! 

Зачем же лошадь стала ты?

Укройся в белые скиты

И, ставя Б-гу свечку

Грызи свою уздечку!"

Но лошадь бьется, не идет,

Наоборот, она довольна.

Уж вечер. Лампа свет лиет.

На уголок застольный.

Восходит поп среди двора,

Он весь ругается и силы напрягает,

Чугунный крест из серебра

Через порог переставляет.

Больному лучше. Поп хохочет,

Закутавшись в свою епанчу,

Больного он кропилом мочит,

Потом с тарелки ест сычуг,

Наполненный ячменной кашей,

И лошадь называет он мамашей.

                             1928

Disease

A sick men, falling into bed

That cannot raise his feeble hand.

A dozen days he's gravely ill -- 

His sweaty forehead is rectangular. 

He sleeps, and sees the monsters' muzzles

That are obtuse and thick as oaks.

A mare sees he with open eyelids.

Its square tooth is all to see. 

She chews the empty med'cine bottles,

And bending reads the Bible aloud,

and dances, urinates in pots,

Consoles the sick with his wife's eyes. 

"My wife, remember being a waif, 

Alas, my dear friend.

Your tender skin was in my hand

Supple at your thighs!

Why did you turn into a horse

And went to white hermits' holes

And lighting candle to the Lord

Chew, chew your harness cord". 

But horse is beating, does not go,

It's happy. Evening comes.

The lamp is shining 

At the table's corner.

The priest is at the yard,

He rises and curses, and concentrates his forces.

An iron cross of pure silver

And priest steps over to the porch. 

The sick feels better. Laughs the priest.

He wraps himself in holy shroud

Then offal from the plate he eats

Filled with the thickened barley flour,

And calls a horsey as his mom. 

Движение

Сидит извозчик, как на троне,

Из ваты сделана броня,

И борода, как икона,

Лежит монетами звеня.

А бедный конь руками машет,

То вытянется, как налим,

То снова восемь ног сверкают

В его блестящем животе.

                        1927