Ilya Selvinsky
Sebastopol

To K. Zelinsky

I was in prison in that town,
My cell was four by three. Still
I could hear the sea through the bars,
And I was happy.
                           Every day at noon
A cannon sounded over the town.
From early morning, barely awake
I was waiting for its thunder.
And was as glad as if the booming clock
Was a present for me.
                                    When the chief,
Not so much a Wrangel¹ man as a tsarist,
Lieutenant Colonel Ivanov of the infantry,
Allowed me to be indulged with a book,
And I, in love with Blok's mist and shadows,²
Was sent ... a telephone directory — I
Took no offense at all. On the contrary!
With an amused expression, I read: "Sobakin.
                                                           Sobakin-Sobakovsky,
                                                           Sobachevky,
                                                           Sobashnikov"
                                               and simply, "Sobaka" —³
And I was happy for nineteen days.
Later I got out and saw the beach,
And in the distance a three-decked schooner,
And behind her a dinghy.
                                       My amusement
Did not fade in the least. I thought
That if this thing dropped anchor,
I would swim to its captain
And would sail then to Constantinople
Or somewhere else... But the schooner
Melted into the blue of the sea.

All the same, I was blissfully serene:
Actually, there's no sense regretting
The transience of happiness! It was already a blessing
That I was happy. And there seemed
No reason for it, so much the better;
As things are, happiness
    was mine in vain.

So I loafed about, rolling like a brig,
Along Count's Dock and past the bronze
Nakhimov,⁴ and past the vistas
Of the eleven-month-old battle,
And past the little house where in the window
Sat a large-headed, stumpy,
Tame raven with blue eyes.

Yes, I was happy! Of course, I was happy.
Madly happy. Nineteen years old
And not a penny. All I had then
Was a smile. That was all my wealth.

Do you like girls, tanned
Darker than their gingery hair?
With eyes filled out with the sea's distances?
With shoulders wider than their hips, eh? Furthermore,
Lips turning up just a little, like a child's?
One such walked toward me.
That is, not so much toward me. But anyway, we walked.
How my heart thumped... Now she is passing.
No, she can't be allowed
To get away...
                      "Excuse me!"
She stopped:
                      "Yes?"
                                 She looked.
Quick, I must think of something!
                                                    She waited.
Oh, hell! What can I say to her?
"I... You see... I... Sorry, but..."

And suddenly she gave me
A really warm look,
And thrusting her hand into a little pink pocket
On the white skirt (that was the fashion then),
Handed me a "Kerenka."5 So that was it!
She's taken me for a beggar... Fine thing!
I ran after her:
                       "Stop!
Really, I'm not... How dare you!
Take it back, I beg you — take it back!
It's just I like you, and I..."
And suddenly I started sobbing. I'd just realized
That all my prison happiness
Was simply trying to hold down the horror.
                                                                   Ah!
Why was I doing this? Far easier
To give way to the feeling. The cannon's salvo...
And this book... a telephone directory.

But the girl took me by the arm,
And, thrusting bystanders aside, led me off
Into some gateway. Two hands
Lay on my shoulders: "There there, darling!
I didn't mean to upset you, darling.
Stop crying, darling, stop it..."
She whispered, breathing hard,
Probably becoming a little inebriated in the half-dark
With her own whispering and that word,
So bewitching, so sweet,
So enticing, which, perhaps,
She'd never had occasion to use before,
That loveliest, most lyrical word: "Darling."
I was in prison in that town.
I was nineteen!
                        And today
Again I am walking over blackened corpses
On the Balaklava-Sebastopol Road,
Where our cavalry division has passed.

On this vacant piece of land was the prison,
There. Turn right. I walk
Toward the steep-rising lane, as if someone
Were directing my footsteps. Why?
Debris... Craters... Smoldering ruins.
And suddenly, in the middle of the gray, burnt-out place,
Some iron gates,
Opening onto a blue emptiness.
I recognize them at once. Yes, yes!
                                                        It is they.

And then for some reason, I look around,
As sometimes one does,
Sensing someone's gaze:
Across the road, in the little room, overgrown
With lilac, burdock and couch grass,
In the window frame, thrown out by an explosion,
That same, tame, big-headed
Centenarian raven with the blue eyes.

Ah, what a poem that was! For the world
The unconquerable city of Sebastopol
Is history. A museum town.
An encyclopedia of names and dates.
But for me... For my heart...
For my whole soul... No, I could not live
At peace, if this town
Had remained in enemy hands.
                                                  Nowhere in the world

Will I find just this lane,
With its slope from heaven to sea,
From light blue to dark blue — crooked,
Slightly drunk, hobbling,
Where once I sobbed, growing tipsy
On the irrepressible whispering of love...
This was the very lane!
                                     And at once I understood
That poetry and the homeland are the same,
That the homeland too is a book
Which one writes for oneself,
With the sacred pen of memory,
Cutting out the prose, the tedious passages,
And leaving sun and love.

Raven, do you recall my girl?
How I would like to burst out sobbing now!
But it's no longer possible. I am old.

____
1. (Baron) Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel (1878-1928), a general in the Tsar's army who led the Whites in the south against the Red Army during the Civil War.
2. Frequent motifs in the poetry of Aleksandr Blok.
3. Sobaka is the Russian word for dog.
4. A monument to Admiral Pavel Stepanovich Nakhimov (1802-1855), a Russian naval hero who was one of the leaders of the heroic defense of Sebastopol during the Crimean War (1853-1856).
5. Kerenka was the popular name for the paper money issued by Aleksandr Kerensky's Provisional Governmentin 1917.

Translated by Daniel Weissbort