RIP, Andrei Voznesensky (fwd)

[Michel Ryckx]

It is great poem, Heikki.  Thank you.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1966/apr/14/five-poems-by-andrei-voznesensky/

Someone with a NY Books subscription around?

Michel.

Heikki:
> Sorry, I forgot to include the publication year of the poem (1960)
> and the translator (W.H. Auden, 1963). I notice that it has also
> been translated by, e.g., the Fenno-Coloradoan Anselm Hollo:
> http://karnikan.com/BalladParabolic.htm
>
> Voznesensky died today at the age of 77. Btw, he and another
> Andrei, Tarkovsky, were classmates.
>
>
> Heikki
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2010 16:34:42 +0300 (EEST)
> From: Heikki Raudaskoski <hraudask at cc.oulu.fi>
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: RIP, Andrei Voznesensky
>
>
>
>  Parabolic Ballad
>
>  Among a parabola life like a rocket flies,
>  Mainly in darkness, now and then on a rainbow,
>  Red-headed bohemian Gauguin the painter
>  Started out life as a prosperous stockbroker.
>  In order to get to the Louvre from Montmartre
>  He made a detour all through Java, Sumatra,
>  Tahiti, the Isles of Marquesas.
>
>                                 With levity
>  He took off in flight from the madness of money,
>  The cackle of women, the frowst of academies,
>  Overpowered the force of terrestrial gravity.
>  The high priests drank their porter and kept up their jabbering:
>  'Straight lines are shorter, less steep than parabolas.
>  It's more proper to copy the heavenly mansions.'
>
>  He rose like a howling rocket, insulting them,
>  With a gale that tore off the tails of their frock-coats.
>  So he didn't steal into the Louvre by the front door
>  But on a parabola smashed through the ceiling.
>  In finding their truths lives vary in daring:
>  Worms come through holes and bold men on parabolas.
>
>  There was once a girl who lived in my neighbourhood.
>  We went to school, took exams simultaneously.
>  But I took off with a bang,
>
>                                 I went whizzing
>  Through the prosperous double-faced stars of Tiflis.
>  Forgive me for this idiotic parabola
>  Cold shoulders in a pitch dark vestibule...
>  Rigid, erect as a radio antenna-rod
>  Sending its call-sign out through the freezing
>  Dark of the universe, how you rang out to me,
>  An undoubtable signal, an earthly stand-by
>  From whom I might get my flight-bearings to land by
>  The parabola does not come to us easily.
>
>  Laughing at law with its warnings and paragraphs
>  Art, love and history race along recklessly
>  Over a parabolic trajectory.
>
>  He is leaving tonight for Siberia.
>                                     Perhaps
>  A straight line after all is the shorter one actually.
>
>
>