EARTH ~
Gennady Aygi
It's a New Morning, at least for me, on each new book publication in English by the Chuvashia born poet Gennady Aygi. Aygi wasn't published in the Soviet Union until the 1980s, and since then he has been widely translated by Peter France and others. . .the most recent gift through the skilled eyes of Sarah Valentine which shows an immediate freshness and Aygi's connection to the outdoors — of both landscape and language. I also much like Valentine's direct speak and thought around modern poetry:
"I think many poets in the United States today struggle with a feeling of irrelevance, of impotence in the face of global-scale crises. Sidelined in a mass-media, technology-driven culture, the American poet seems to have a slim chance of connecting with an audience, and even less of a chance to effect large-scale change through poetry. But elsewhere in the world many poets, like Aygi in the Soviet Union, wrote and continue to write poetry at the risk of losing their lives and livelihoods. For them poetry is an ethical act, an act of humanity, regardless of the cost. Many of Aygi's poems confront the political and social crises of his age, but many others are small poems about the beauty of fields and flowers, the birth of a child. Some consist of only a few lines, a few words, or a single word, or a single letter.
Why bother? What difference could jotting down a few lines about flowers possibly make? The answer, I think, for Aygi was that each word of each poems was part of a grander project, an exploration of the nature of existence, of our place in this universe — whatever that is — of what lies beyond the limits of our knowing, and of how, through a humane art, we can maintain our connection with all of it. Also, and perhaps most importantly, each poem is a celebration of mystery, of the fact that, though we pursue these questions, life in
all its forms is a mysterious gift. That, if we can find it, there is always enough light — sometimes even on the petal of a flower — to dispel the darkness."
GENNADY AYGI (1934-2006)
ONCE AGAIN — INTO THE SNOW
and you begin to sing — and I am disappearing
slowly into the snow (like before : a figure
darkening in the dusk
somewhere far away) and the broken board appears
there — among the ruins
in the abandoned shack (they sang whispered
then
cried long ago — it seems
from great joy) and in the distance the forest
as if
in a dream
opens — and you are singing
(though — you needn't
for it's already over)
you go on
(though even without us eternity
is already ripening
shimmering
like gold)
you go on
though you're becoming too muffled
to sing
GIRL IN CHILDHOOD
she goes out
like a bright breath into the field
like board-white buckwheat
cuts through the woods
birds like straw
take the forest sounds on their backs
her pigtails on her back without a plan
as in a dream begin a village
looking over the fire tower's edge
and there in the clearing in the wind
beyond the far heart of the golden rain
a birch plays with out a birch
into u without u
SILENCE
1
in the invisible glow
of pulverized melancholy
I know uselessness like the poor know their last piece of clothing
and old utensils
and I know that this uselessness
is what the country needs from me
reliable like a secret pact:
muteness as life
indeed for my whole life
2
Muteness is a tribute — but silence is for myself
3
to grow accustomed to silence
like the beating of one's heart
like life
as if a well-known place there
and in this I am — as Poetry is
and I know
that my work is both hard and for itself alone
like the sleeplessness of the night watchman
at the city graveyard
LITTLE TATAR SONG
I took a pail and went for water
because we had no water.
I sat next to my pail and cried
because we had no joy.
Back in those days
I was no taller than the pail.
"Mother" I whispered — the meadow hushed,
"Brother" I said — and sleep fell silent.
What was I trying to name was silence:
sun, oak forest, wormwood.
Only to my song,
beyond the aul,
I silently cried — "Sister."
~
