Sergey Stratanovsky
Translated by J. Kates
"dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Sulamith"
Paul Celan1
O the holocaust in Oświęcim2 The accusation of a documentary film is interrupted by an advertisement for the very latest cosmetics from the collection of a screen diva A fashionable caprice shoves its way into the death zone What's in the collection? Eau de cologne for behind the ears henna for the hair of the Lorelei powder for the cheek of Marguerite Little bottles of nail polish, and compacts with the cremated ashes Ashes of the bones of the Shulamite *** What's with Russia? A turn to the West? Will the smell of the back stairway Finally dissipate, The smell of the psychiatric ward, the depression of those faces That wasting gloom finally disappear? *** Philemon and Baucis in their own creaking hovel, On their own burnt-over patch of land across from the new mcmansion, Wait to be swept away by a storm - a private liquidation, To clear the countryside.
1 "Your golden hair Margarete / Your ashen hair Shulamite"
2 The Polish name for Auschwitz.
Russophobia
The Russian Russophobe rushes to the river - to drown
("Fed up with living in this eternal vile squalor!")
But reconsiders: there is a choice - to emigrate,
Or (variation on a theme): to express in hellishly
Contemptuous verse his heartfelt, furious heat . . .
Which published, brings him a substantial fee
The Italian Rooms at the Hermitage
Umbrian dreams are a Russian ark, windows opening on azure hills, But in the windows across the way: a Nevsky gloom, Stygian ice, murky snow and on the far shore, behind the blizzard, The prison of all Russia. The hard mouth Of cold cells.