Ilya Selvinsky
Turtle

In a Hakodate market on the counter
Lies a turtle that fatigue has overcome.
Near it heaps a pile of shells which have been sawed-up;
And around its bleeding, swarms of midges hum.

Picking out a piece that seems to her more meaty,
The attractive shopper says with a staid air,
Will you please chop off for me a half-a-yen’s worth
Of this hump of ham or of that side-flank there?’

While the butcher with his little ax stands chopping,
He grunts with relish above the cripple’s ear.
But the turtle only narrows more its eyelids,
Only pulls its head into itself, asmear.

Having lopped off all the legs up to the groin,
Now the butcher starts work on the belly’s hill.
But the turtle doesn’t die. It still is living...
And, outrageously tenacious, looks on still!

Here, my reader, is the ending of my story,
And there is no moral here as an adjoint.
But, of course, I wouldn’t be much of a poet,
If my thinking stopped at this important point.

Translated by Merrill Sparks and Vladimir Markov