Yaroslav Smelyakov
The Russian Language

Over your threadhare cradle,
scarcely, at first, to be heard,
wives in Ryazan would sit singing,
like pearls, dropping word after word.

Under a tavern’s dim lantern
By a table, much scrubbed and scooped,
Over their wine left untasted
Like shot falcons, mail-drivers drooped.

On broken-down hooves you plodded,
in starover¹ fires you burned,
in troughs you were washed; like a cricket
over a hearth you chirred.

You sat on an evening porch-step,
your face in the sunset glow;
you borrowed Koltsov’s² gold seal ring
and Kurbsky’s³ as well, long ago.

Our grandsires in Tatar thralldom,
with flour on their faces and breasts,
ground on their Russian millstones
the language of uncalled guests.

You borrowed a sprinkling of German,
though you could have taken more,
that Germans not be sole possessors
or worldwide scholarly lore.

You, smelling of sour sheepskins
And the kvass which our grandsires swilled,
were written with blackened slivers
and silvery swan-feather quills.

Prized higher than gold, nay, priceless,
in ’41, with bent nails,
you were written on crumbling stucco
by martyrs in nazi jails.

The mightiest rulers vanished
finally for sure,
hen against our land and our language
they lifted a hand impure.

____
1. Starover-believer in the old faith, member of a banned religious sect opposed to the Orthodox Church. — Tr.

2. Koltsov, Alexei — 19th-century Russian poet. — Tr.

3. Kurbsky, Andrei — Russian prince of the time of Ivan the Terrible. Kurbsky’s letters to the tsar were considered to be masterpieces of Russian prose. — Tr.

Translated by Dorian Rottenberg