Once people get under my skin,
they never find the exit.
They romp around,
fill my insides with their song and dance,
make lots of noise, using my dumbness as their cover-up.
I’m full to bursting with wise men
and fools- they’ve utterly exhausted me!
So much so that my skin’s
quite worn through
by their heels, rubbing from inside!
Give me a chance to breathe!
It’s all impossible!
I’m stuffed to the gills
with those who’ve brought me so much joy
as well as those who’ve given most offence.
What has come over me?
What can I do with this great throng
stuck in my own small heart-
police are needed to keep order there!
I’ve gone a little cracked,
for there, in that secluded shade,
I’ve dropped none of the women
and none of them’s dropped me!
It’s awkward to revive dead friendships
however much you tire yourself with trying.
The only friends I’ve lost
were on the outside,
but of those inside I’ve lost nobody.
All the people in my life I’ve quarreled with,
or made friends with,
or only shaken hands with,
have merged in a new life under the old one’s skin-
a secret conflagration without flame.
The repossession of the unpossessable
is like a waterfall that rushes upward.
Those who have died
have been born again in me,
those who have not been born as yet
cry out.
My population is too large,
beyond the strength of just one man-
but then, a person would be incomplete
if he contained no others.



Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Tradução inglesa de  Arthur Boyars e Simon Franklin 

Memento


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 i
n 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.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1933)

Being Late


Something dangerous
is beginning:
I
am coming late
to my own self.
I made an appointment
with my thoughts--
the thoughts
were snatched
from me.
I made an appointment
with Faulkner--
but they made me
go to a banquet.
I made an appointment
with history,
but a grass-widow
dragged me into bed.
Worse
than barbed wire
are birthday parties,
mine and others',
and roasted suckling pigs
hold me
like a sprig of parsley
between their teeth!
Led away for good
to a life absolutely not my own,
everything that I eat,
eats me,
everything that I drink,
drinks me.
I made an appointment
with myself,
but they invite me
to feast on my own spareribs.
I am garlanded
from all sides
not by strings of bagels,
but by the holes of bagels,
and I look like
an anthology
of zeros.
Life gets broken
into hundreds of lifelets,
that exhaust
and execute me.
In order
to get through to myself
I had to smash my body
against others',
and my fragments,
my smithereens,
are trampled
by the roaring crowd.
I am trying
to glue myself together,
but my arms
are still severed.
I'd write
with my left leg,
but both the left
and the right
have run off,
in different directions.
I don't know--
where is my body?
And soul?
Did it really fly off,
without a murmured
"good-bye!"?
How do I break through
to a faraway namesake,
waiting for me
in the cold somewhere?
I've forgotten
under which clock
I am waiting
for myself.
For those who don't know
who they are,
time
does not exist.
No one is
under the clock.
On the clock
there is nothing.
I am late for my appointment
with me.
There is no one.
Nothing but cigarette butts.
Only one flicker--
a lonely,
dying
spark...

.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

(Tradução inglesa de Albert C. Todd)
.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1933)



ASSIGNATION

No, No! Believe me!
I’ve come to the wrong place!
I’ve made a god-awful mistake! Even the glass
in my hand’s an accident,
and so’s the gauze glance
of the woman who runs the joint.
"Let’s dance, huh?
You’re pale...
Didn’t get enough sleep?"
And I feel like there’s no place
to hide, but say, anyway, in a rush
"I’ll go get dressed...
No, no...it’s just
that I ended up out of bounds..."
And later, trailing me as I leave:
"This is where booze gets you...
What do you mean, ‘not here’? Right here! Right here every time!
You bug everybody, and you’re so satisfied
with yourself, Zhenichka,
you’ve got a problem."
I shove the frost of my hands
down my pockets, and the streets around are snow,
deep snow. I dive into a cab. Buddy, kick this thing! Behind
the Falcon
there’s a room. They’re supposed to be waiting for me there.
She opens the door,
but what the hell’s wrong with her?
Why the crazy look?
"It’s almost five o’clock.
You sure you couldn’t have come a little later?
Well, forget it. Come on in. Where else could you go now?"
Shall I explode
with a laugh
or maybe with tears?
I tell you I was scribbling doggerel,
but I got lost someplace.
I hide from the eyes. Wavering I move backwards:
"No, no! Believe me! I’ve come to the wrong place!"
Once again the night,
once again snow
and somebody’s insolent song,
and somebody’s clean, pure laughter.
I could do with a cigarette.
In the blizzard Pushkin’s demons flash past,
and their contemptuous, buck-toothed grin
scares me to death.
And the kiosks,
and the drugstores,
and the social security offices
scare me just as much...
No, no! Believe me! I’ve ended up
in the wrong place again...
It’s horrible to live
and even more horrible
not to live...
Ach, this being homeless
like the Wandering Jew...Lord! Now I’ve gotten myself
into the wrong century,
wrong epoch,
geologic era,
wrong number.
The wrong place again.
I’m wrong.
I’ve got it wrong...
I go, slouching my shoulders as I’d do
if I’d lost some bet,
and ah, I know it...everybody knows it...
I can’t pay off.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Tradução inglesa de James Dickey e Anthony Kahn