Nikolay Zabolotsky
The White Night

Look: it’s not a ball, nor masquerade,
here night’s passing is mistimed,
here wild laughter, wine-besotted,
flies about like a parrot, blind;
hills and bridges come apart,
lovers gather in a crowd,
one is ardent, another jaded,
a third one’s head is bowed...
Love groans beneath the leaves
and changes places on the ground,
now it approaches, then recedes...
But the muses love year round.

By a railing the Nevka surges,
suddenly a drum beat rolls:
a rocket in an arc converges,
spiraling upwards as it coils.
Then blazing pears, soaring high,
spin — a Bengal belly in the sky.

Rings swing to and fro on trees,
thick smoke from a torch drops
in the breeze. But on the Nevka
sirens, or harlots —
no, they’re sirens — rise up,
clothed in a silvery blue,
slightly chilly — yet they proffer
their lips, a pallid hue
and immobile as a medallion.
But this was merely an illusion.

I resumed my walk. Night lay
lengthwise in the grass, white as chalk:
bushes rose up vertically
in sheathes of multi-colored steel,
and on a branch somewhere above
nightingales cuckooed. And pity
was all they could feel,
as though incapable of love.

And there, swelling like an angel
and lying in wait for any saint,
Elagin got up in a crouch
and swilled, then he fell silent:
this time two more’d been flushed out.

A steamer sails with winding screw
and languid music at its stern,
some little boats go out to greet it,
but oarsmen make a stupid crew;
it nudges them — and off they turn,
fleeing, fleeing, then once more
another meeting they provoke.
It cries to them: I’ll cripple you!
But they’re convinced that no one spoke...

And all around there’s pandemonium,
and white air clinging to the eaves,
but night’s last gasp already breathes
and sways as on a set of scales.
Thus an aborted foetus — an angel,
having opened wide its milky eyes,
sways in a jar of alcohol
and cries out to the skies.

Translated by Christopher R. Fortune