Siberia (1936)
Marc Chagall, illustrations to Siberia , 1953.
In the Hut
I
Setting sun on roads in icy blue.
Sweet, the slumber-colors in your heart.
From the valley, shimmering toward you,
In the snow of sunset shines a hut.
Wonder-woods sway wide on window-panes,
Magic sleighs ring in a ring. A niche
In the attic: doves. Their humming rains,
Humming out my face. And the Irtysh, [7]
Flashing crystals on its icy deck
Trembles, half-unreal half-beguiled.
Silence-soaring cupolas protect
Blooming world: a seven-year-old child.
II
In the shining-dark, the snowed-in home
Of my childhood in Siberia's waste,
Eyes of shadows blossom in a dome —
Quicksilvery flowers, light-encased.
In extinguished corners, one after another,
Blows the moon her breath, her dazzling bands.
White as face of moon, my looming father,
Silence of the snow is on his hands.
Father cuts black bread with shining knife.
Merciful. And blue, his bearded head.
And with freshly sliced ideas rife,
I immerse in salt my father's bread.
III
Knife of mercy. Father. Smoking brand.
Childhood. Shadow pulls a violin
From the wall. And sound-flurries descend,
Snow-sounds falling on my head, thin-thin.
Silence. Father plays. Each sound, each hue —
Etchings in the air. Like in a frost
Silver slivers of your breath hang blue
Over moon-glazed space, on snowy crust.
Through a pane engulfed in icy furs
Peeps a wolf to sniff the music's flesh.
Silence. In our dovecote now occurs:
Baby-dove pecks out of eggshell, fresh.
Dawn
Signs of paws — an animal has sown
Like blue roses in the white snow's gleam,
When the sun, new risen and unknown,
Like a baby, casts its piercing scream —
Barely gilded on their rims. Below,
Darkness still. The roots of forest's trees
Gnash their teeth in deep ravines of snow.
Harnessed to a sled, a dog will wheeze
Living steam. The steam climbs straight and high,
Meets a chimney smoke, just slightly bent,
And a human breath that's drawing nigh —
Hovering in air at dawn, a tent.
Recognition
I
"Papa, tell me where the whole world ends!" —
Philosophically, solution I request.
Answers he: "See, where the sun descends,
Just behind that hut, beyond hill's crest."
Really? If it's so — I would not think:
Catch up with the setting sun! I run,
In a silver net of tears, up, to the brink,
Where the whole world ends and hides the sun!
Eyes are begging the Siberian God
Not to make my longing all in vain.
All the zillion years before me nod,
Trembling in the snow: Be blessed again.
II
Back of me, my father — tiny dot.
Toward the sun is galloping my heart.
Now, I run uphill and reach the hut!
Eagerness still beckons, won't depart.
To the bonfire, over howling pit,
Stretch my lips, my body would descend.
Papa, see, the world goes on a bit,
And there is no, is no, is no end.
Papa cannot hear. A star will blanch.
Papa cannot see, out of the blue,
How a boy becomes an avalanche
Made of light and wonderment anew.
Like a Sled Bedecked with Longing Bells
On the blue, the diamond snow, I write
With the wind as with a magic pen,
Straying in the shimmering depth and light
Of his childhood. Never seen, as then,
Such lucidity, which grips, compels
All the lonely shadows of your mind.
Like a sled bedecked with longing bells,
Thin and long, my life will toll behind,
Through the evening steppe. And in its mirror,
Moon will press her nose against the glass,
With two wings, reflecting brighter, clearer,
Sparkling brass.
A Fur of Fire
Fields around — of shiny dazzling metals.
Trees — in icy rock, all climbing higher.
Snows have no more room to drop their petals,
Sun walks in the sky in fur of fire.
With his diamond brush upon my pate
Artist Frost paints as on window pane
Snowy legends of his color palette,
Signed in flight of dove, in sky a strain.
Sun sets inside me. Ended her route.
Just her flaming fur alone arose
On a stretching branch. And I — a mute —
Would put on the fur before it goes.
In a Siberian Forest
I
Infant sun, forever born anew,
Rolls in snow with me, with light enriched.
Papa says: "Come on, the sky is blue,
Let's go fetch some wood." And so we hitched
To a sled our silver colt. And went!
Shining axe. In flames of snow, the day
Sliced by whetted sun-knives. Sound is spent.
Sparkling dust — our breath! We run — away,
Over silent steppe of sleeping bears,
Through the sunweb. Ringing fields aglow.
Yesternight has scattered all its stars,
Frozen now they lie, calm in the snow.
II
Forest. Fresh the glimmer on the trees
Breathes the howling of the wolves. Around,
Glowing echoes of the silence breeze,
Shoot hot arrows in my heart, resound.
Every snowflake is a bell of winter,
Touch it — and it rings, a paradox!
Till the ring splits in a thousand splinters,
From a snow tent comes a little fox,
He sticks out his tongue and disappears.
— "Foxie, do not fear!" A spark that cracks
Warms my cheek and takes away the fear,
Till the sun sets in my father's axe.
III
To our quiet hut we travel back,
But my soul still straying in the forest.
Good old forest, calm and deep and black,
Warms it and includes it in his chorus.
Stars blown by the wind, sailing on high,
Crown me with their song, with sparks at play!
For the stars above I want to cry …
Till the forest's last tree fades away,
Just the ruts in snow, as in a bed.
Father's voice awakens me, we roam,
And I see: the moon is in our sled,
Traveling to the valley, to our home.
To Father
Pa, behind your coffin on a sled
I ran after you, I wanted to
Catch up with your memory that fled.
At my breast a dove as white as snow.
When a pole, with pulsing heartbeats, hollowed
In the ice a hut, for you to stay,
And the white abyss has quickly swallowed
You — in ice, you sparkle to this day —
I too wanted to jump in with you!
But my dove burst out of my embrace:
Evening sun crowned with white gold that flew —
And to life she drew me in her trace…
Irtysh
Hush! From what new source springs such a ringing?
The Irtysh is fleeing from its shore!
Seeks in cold waves, whirlpooling and swinging,
Faces of the days that are no more.
From a circle cut in ice, it opens
To the stars its eyes: "Oh, spring, how long
Will you overlook my praying, hoping?
Will the ice be broken by my song?"
Then the night has muttered to his beard:
— "A new sun is being forged!" A shiver —
And a star fell from a thread and sheered
Down, to kiss the stirring winter river.
Snowman
I
Snowman, monument to childhood, guard
Of a frozen treasure! Not in vain
Do I still believe you are my lord.
Hail to you, my snowman, hail again!
You're the god of children and of wind,
At your feet, my rainbow dream arrives.
Wolves come up in packs to you to spin
Prayers: Snowman, watch over our lives!
Snowman, you're eternal, never melts
Your white, sparkling crystal coat of mail.
Beautiful your dancing on your stilts
For the human stars down in the vale!
II
Snowman, clumsy, with a pot so triste —
On your head a crown! Come and surprise:
One more time your smile out of the mist.
All my loneliness warm with your ice.
If my longing reached you left behind —
In the traces of my footsteps go:
In a hut of sounds, there you will find
Me in holy prayer to the snow.
If you don't find — you alone will last,
We have missed each other like a rhyme.
You inherit then my small-hut past
And you finish breathing out my time.
Siberian Spring
I
Multicolored wings begin to flutter
Over taiga[8] wilderness in wind.
And a melted mirror springs and shudders
Over miles, where green seams Just begin.
Snows sing a farewell, a wet, gray chain,
Wings and mirrors full of hues and sound.
With the lion's roaring of the rain
Flares the childish wish to run unbound,
Catching up with all wild streams he misses,
Flying like a bird, he'd soar away:
Over people, forests, rocks, abysses —
To the new, the shining festive day!
II
Shimmering in bright green, the Irtysh
Polishes its metal on the stone.
Wants to find again its waves, its fish,
For again the floes of ice are flown…
And instead of looking dark and grave
Through its only eye, a sawn-out wheel —
It observes through every tiny wave
How the world is spinning in a reel
Round the sun that, daring, from its perch,
Hurls its swords, and now it licks the sweet,
Sparkling ice-shine of a budding birch
As a child licks eagerly a treat.
Kirghizes[9]
From afar, hello to you, Kirghizes
At Irtysh's bonfires, gilded hues,
Where, among the dancing spears still breezes
Your old melody, in dance you lose
Melancholy hearts, and fall asleep.
Everyone his weeping sips like brandy.
And the camel's hump, he smiles so deep
With his creases, wisely understanding
All the music of your yellow fever.
When my life, a lantern that flickers —
Far, to you, I bend my song forever,
Open seven ears — hear deeper, quicker.
My Childhood Friend Changury
I
Are you still alive, my friend Changury,
Or a snowman amid frozen seas?
From the clouds your flickering face is luring
With two pupils borrowed from the trees.
Let us play again and find anew
All we never had in childhood past.
At the early breath of dawn, still blue,
Let us kiss each leaf and blade of grass.
Let us gulp mare's milk from goatskin bag,
Start a hunt of owls in light of day.
Let us, after long carousing, sag,
Fall asleep as then, slumped by the way.
II
Come, my brother, riding on your deaf
Humpy camel, quickly hoist me up
By my shirt and hold me like a staff —
Let us soar into the wind and gallop
To the quiet corners, there to meet
Birth of shadows ere the fall of night.
Grasses sparkle, charming at our feet.
Splendor doesn't know its own rich sight.
Spots of life dark in the tundra wide,
The Irtysh is clouded, on his own.
Camel steeped in blue. And we both ride
To the lustrous rocks of granite stone.
III
When the haughty mountains disappear
And a violet forest floats aloft,
A long evening-hand brings close and near
All that's separate, is merging soft.
The last flicker dances on a fir.
A last word is dancing on our lips.
In grass dream, our camel doesn't stir.
Only silence sails off on its ships.
In the sky a rake combs a wet cloud.
Opens up its secrets. Night comes mellow.
And we eat the moon (it is allowed!)
Like a sliced-up piece of watermelon.
At the Bonfire
I
In the forest, night stokes up a fire.
Youthful trees grow ashen gray in fear.
Among crackling branches, climbing higher,
Shadows fall where axes sharp appear.
The Kirghizes, sitting in the glow,
Mirrored in their flashing blades, awake.
Branches crackle with a rooster's crow.
And like pearls when a necklace breaks
Falls the dew on praying hands, clasped tight,
Falls the dew on sparks, all rising higher.
And a soaring bird, sunk in the night,
Flutters in, its violin on fire.
II
A bronze figure leaps, a daring star
At the bonfire, comes in with a bound,
In a dance with silvery guitar,
Whirling with the forest all around.
Whirling. Drums. An ardent tune, a spell.
Till in sparkling rhythm of the rite —
All the forest swinging like a bell.
Last stars fall into the beards of night.
Drunkenly dance with him the Kirghizes
In a chain around the flaming dish.
And with waves like running spears, he freezes,
Tickles the horizons, the Irtysh.
The North Star
North Star, you who walk along with me,
I'm your snowman in a cloak of skin.
From my coldness, all the neighbors flee,
Just the birches at the fence stay in.
North Star, faithful to the death, I see
How much mildness you recall and stir!
Every summer, fire snows on me,
Winter brings your ringing in my ear.
Let the memory that never passed
To your bluish smile above be sent.
Let these sounds, let this demanding quest,
Over me remain a monument.