Andrei Bely
The Convict

To N. N. Russov

He ran. Bid farewell to the guards,
The earth purpled in the forest.
He skulked above the eternal calm,
Slaking ruthless vengeance.

He skulked, lifeless staff
In cold clenching hand.
He stood on the Volga slopes
And dropped to the dear river.

Fell on a rock, white-incandescent,
Bundled up in a grey robe.
Looked at the disheveled clouds.
Looked at the crimson sunset.

In spaces, lashed by a flame,
Hung the orphaned smoke,
Caressing both earth and stone,
And the rusty annuli around feet.

The iron annuli rang
As they fell on the river slope.
As they sang on the green slope,
Rattling with dear familiar weeping.

He was parting for good with Siberia:
Forgive me, my dear gaol,
Where years over watery vastness
I spent exhausted by iron chains.

Years on a stony, naked floor
Where he lay as if by habit.
Down, behind the blind stockade,
Swayed the gleaming spit;

Where for years he met with dread
The barely trudging days,
Where for years with a heavy swing
He flung his mallet on flint;

Where for years so strangely agape
Was the grin of dying mouths,
And storms splashed and tossed
The trembling leafless shrub;

They cast the clangoring logs,
Berating, on top of a barge
And close to the shore, evenly,
They hauled them, falling to ropes.

Where he cast life, cursing,
To the daring, seething blizzard,
And the biting frost moaned,
Scathing the Taiga with winds,

Tearing clothes to tatters,
Crackling and beating in shrubs;
Shrieking and twisting, entwining,
Smacking shaved cheeks.

Where blood showed in foggy cold,
To cries and calls of lament,
From the air fell, whistling
And biting, the furious whip,

Cleaving to the back, and tearing
Raw pieces of skin…
And the clouds scowled more gravely
And more gravely sang the sands.

The crushed shoulders till now
You ate away, scar of lead.
Make way, ye lowery fir trees!
Go dark, evening scarlet!

There, nests, like black eyes,
Staring from a scarp,
Into the fog of hanging night
Screechingly shot out swallows.

Fitfully with the sign of the cross
He blessed his wide forehead.
Dashed through precipitous steeps,
Churning the leaden waters.

And the icy stream clung
To the body as prickling glass.
A lump of muddy earth
Crumbled above with yellow sand.

Lights appeared. And for long
Glowed from the distant rafts;
Sternly the tenebrous Volga
Crushed them in foaming surges.

There, sparks, breezing wearily,
Ascended to drown in the night;
And a wailful song was heard
There, in the deep blue mud.

There, the dark disappeared in a gallop,
And the wind played with wavelets.
And someone shooting a glance
From the clouds winked to the east.

And now, quietly over a wave
He swayed with a yellow face.
The whining gulls languidly
Brushed against him with their wings.

Translated by Andrew Stempton