Vladislav Khodasevich
Petersburg

They gave themselves to sad monotonous
tasks, until their strength was spent.
Half-dead among them, only I
distracted their predicament.

They looked at me and they forgot
their bubbling kettles boiling dry,
the boots of felt that scorched on stoves
— all listening to my poetry

Then in sepulchral Russian dark
a flowery herald-girl took my hand;
and music's concord was revealed
to me, knocked sideways in the wind.

Mad with visions, over the sheet-ice
on the canal, I'd reach the bank
and slither up the crumbling steps
clutching a piece of cod that stank,

and driving every verse through prose
disjointed in the pull and push,
somehow I grafted the classic rose
to the Soviet briar bush.

Translated by Peter Daniels