I just noticed that the Australian band Died Pretty released their gorgeous first album, Free Dirt, on 8 August 1986, two days before my nineteenth birthday. Sadly, the band’s unforgettable lead singer Ron S. Peno died on 11 August this year, a day after my birthday. Happily, my equally unforgettable friend Jenya Kulakova celebrates her thirty-fifth birthday today. She was not yet around to enjoy Free Dirt when it hit the record stores thirty-seven years ago, but maybe she’ll enjoy it today—along with my translation of a poem written by one of the most famous writers from her adopted hometown. ||| TRR
Image courtesy of Jittery White Guy Music
August
Provincial towns, where you’ll never get a straight answer.
What’s it to you? It was yesterday however you cut it.
Outside the elms murmur, nodding to a landscape
Only the train ever sees. Somewhere a bee buzzes.
The knight made a career of crossroads, but these days
Is himself a stoplight. Plus there’s a river in the distance.
And between the mirror into which you gaze
And those who can’t recall you there’s also little difference.
Closed fast in the heat, the shutters are entwined in gossip,
Or merely ivy, to avoid making a blunder.
Bounding through the front door, a sunburnt stripling
Clad in only his swim trunks has come to collect your future.
So twilight’s a long time in descending. Evening’s usually cast
In the shape of a train station square, with a statue, etc.,
Where the glance in which you read “You bastard!”
Is in direct proportion to the crowd that’s not present.
Source: VK. Translated (many moons ago too) by the Russian Reader