Poem: Yevgeny Yevtushenko, "Memento"
Posted by kluciole at 8/22/2009 12:25 AM 
Categories: International, Cultures, Literature, Writing, love, History
Categories: International, Cultures, Literature, Writing, love, History
Memento
by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Like a reminder of this life
of trams, sun, sparrows,
and the flighty uncontrolledness
of streams leaping like thermometers,
and because ducks are quacking somewhere
above the crackling of the last, paper-thin ice,
and because children are crying bitterly
(remember children's lives are so sweet!)
and because in the drunken, shimmering starlight
the new moon whoops it up,
and a stocking crackles a bit at the knee,
gold in itself and tinged by the sun,
like a reminder of life,
and because there is resin on tree trunks,
and because I was madly mistaken
in thinking that my life was over,
like a reminder of my life -
you entered into me on stockinged feet.
You entered - neither too late nor too early -
at exactly the right time, as my very own,
and with a smile, uprooted me
from memories, as from a grave.
And I, once again whirling among
the painted horses, gladly exchange,
for one reminder of life,
all its memories.
1974
Translated by Arthur Boyars an Simon Franklin
HERE
Yevgeny Yevtushenko (b. 1933). Born in Siberia near Lake Baikal, Yevtushenko is Russia's best-known living poet, attracting huge stadium audiences (30,000 at one reading). He has also written essays and toured the world as a speaker, currently spending half of the year teaching at Tulsa University in Oklahoma.
His most recent work is a novel, Don't Die Before You're Dead (1991) which follows the Soviet Union from the end of World War II through the early 1990s. Although he was sometimes held in disfavor during the Soviet years (once labeled "the head of the intellectual juvenile delinquents" whose poems were "pygmy spittle"), Yevtushenko has been immensely popular from the early 1960s until the present.
HERE
of trams, sun, sparrows,
and the flighty uncontrolledness
of streams leaping like thermometers,
and because ducks are quacking somewhere
above the crackling of the last, paper-thin ice,
and because children are crying bitterly
(remember children's lives are so sweet!)
and because in the drunken, shimmering starlight
the new moon whoops it up,
and a stocking crackles a bit at the knee,
gold in itself and tinged by the sun,
like a reminder of life,
and because there is resin on tree trunks,
and because I was madly mistaken
in thinking that my life was over,
like a reminder of my life -
you entered into me on stockinged feet.
You entered - neither too late nor too early -
at exactly the right time, as my very own,
and with a smile, uprooted me
from memories, as from a grave.
And I, once again whirling among
the painted horses, gladly exchange,
for one reminder of life,
all its memories.
1974
Translated by Arthur Boyars an Simon Franklin
HERE
Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1933 - present)
Yevgeny Yevtushenko (b. 1933). Born in Siberia near Lake Baikal, Yevtushenko is Russia's best-known living poet, attracting huge stadium audiences (30,000 at one reading). He has also written essays and toured the world as a speaker, currently spending half of the year teaching at Tulsa University in Oklahoma.
His most recent work is a novel, Don't Die Before You're Dead (1991) which follows the Soviet Union from the end of World War II through the early 1990s. Although he was sometimes held in disfavor during the Soviet years (once labeled "the head of the intellectual juvenile delinquents" whose poems were "pygmy spittle"), Yevtushenko has been immensely popular from the early 1960s until the present.
HERE
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