Arseny Tarkovsky
The Poet

«There lived on earth a humble knight…»¹

This little book a poet
Gave me in the corridors
Of Gosizdat.²
The book is torn and tattered,
The poet long since dead.

It was said that in his visage
There was something of a bird
And of Egypt-so they said.
He had a beggar’s greatness
And his honor was assailed.

How he feared the space
Of corridors! The importunity
Of creditors! And in a burst
Of affectation would see fit
To take his fee as though it were a gift.

Thus, a clown of ancient vintage
In a bowler hat, feigning drunkenness,
Bows and crawls about the screen
But like a sober man
Beneath his pique waistcoat hides a wound.

Borne aloft by double rhyme
His day’s work is done —
Fare thee well, oh, fare thee well!
Welcome, holiday and pay,
Loaf of bread, both black and white!

With convex words he played around,
His birdlike beak would smile,
On those he met he fixed his grasp,
Of loneliness he was afraid
And poems he would read to strangers.

So a poet ought to live.
I myself flit through the world,
And loneliness I dread.
How many times in loneliness
I take this book to read.

Few descriptions in his verses,
Only chaos at the station,
And theater agitation,
Only people in confusion,
Market, queues and-prison.

Life, it seems, has mixed it in.
Destiny has woven this.

____
1. The opening line from an untitled poem by Pushkin that is replicated in part in his drama in verse. «Stseny iz rytsarskikh vremion» (Scenes from Chivalrous Times).
2. The usual contraction of Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo (State Publishing House), a major Soviet publisher.

Translated by Peter Norman