Translated from French by Ros Schwartz
MARINA TSVETAYEVA
Homesickness
Homesickness! Silly fallacy
laid bare so long ago.
It’s all the same where I’m to be
entirely alone —
it’s all the same across what stones
I lug my shopping basket,
towards some house as alien
as a hospital or barracks.
I do not care what faces see
me bristle like a captive lion,
or out of which society
I’m quickly forced into my own
fenced realm of silent feelings.
I’m like an iceless polar bear —
just where I fail to fit (won’t try!)
and am belittled, I don’t care.
My native tongue will not delude
me with its milky call.
I won’t, I can’t be understood
in any tongue at all
by passers-by (voracious eaters
of newspapers, milkers of rumour) —
they’re of the twentieth century,
and me — no time is home to me!
Dumbfounded, like a log that fell
on an abandoned lane,
all is the same to me, all, all
the same, and what has been
most dear to me now matters least.
All signs, all memories and dates
have been erased:
a soul born — any place.
My homeland cared for me so little
that the most clever snoop
could search my soul for birthmarks — he’ll
find nothing with his loupe!
Yes, every house is strange to me
and every temple — barren.
All, all the same. Yet, if I see,
alone along the verge — a rowan…
Translated from Russian by Boris Dralyuk
ANNA SEGHERS
from Transit
“The Germans are now the real masters here. And since you presumably are a member of that nation, you must know what German ‘order’ means, Nazi order, which they’re now all boasting about here. It has nothing to do with World Order, the old one. It is a kind of control. The Germans are not going to miss the chance to thoroughly control and check all people leaving Europe. In the process they might find some troublemaker for whom they’ve been hunting for decades.”
“All right. All right. But after you’re checked out, after you have a visa what significance is the transit visa? Why does it expire? What is it actually? Why aren’t people allowed to travel through countries on their way to their new homes in other countries?”
He said, “My son, it’s all because each country is afraid that instead of just travelling through, we’ll want to stay. A transit visa — that gives you permission to travel through a country with the stipulations that you don’t plan to stay.”
Suddenly he changed his approach. He addressed me in a different, very solemn, tone of voice that fathers use only when they’re finally sending their sons out into the world. “Young man,” he said, “you came here with scarcely any baggage, alone and without a destination. You don’t even have a visa. You’re not the least concerned that the Marseilles Prefect will not let you stay here if you don’t have a visa. Now, let’s assume that by some stroke of luck, or by your own efforts, something happens, though it rarely does, or maybe because when you least expect it, a friend reaches out a hand from the dark, that is, from across the ocean, or maybe through Providence itself, or maybe with the help of a committee, anyway, let’s assume you get a visa. For one brief moment you’re happy. But you soon realize that the problem isn’t solved so easily. You have a destination — no big deal, everybody has that. But you can’t just get to that country by sheer force of will, through the stratosphere. You have to travel on oceans, through the countries between. You need a transit visa. For that you need your wits. And time. You have no idea how much time it takes. For me time is of the essence. But when I look at you, I think time is even more precious for you. Time is youth itself. But you must not fly off in too many directions. You must think only of the transit visa. If I may say so, you have to forget your destination for a while, for at this moment only the countries in between are what matter, otherwise you won’t be able to leave. What matters now is to make the consul see that you’re serious, that you’re not one of those fellows who want to stay in a place that is only a transit country. And there are ways to prove this. Any consul will ask for such proof. Let’s assume you’re lucky and have a berth on a ship and the trip as such is a certainty, which is really a miracle when you consider how many want to leave and how few available ships there are. If you’re a Jew, which you’re not, then you might be able to secure a berth on board a ship with the help of Jewish aid groups. If you’re Aryan, then maybe Christian groups can help. If you’re nothing, or godless, or a Red, then for God’s sake, or with the help of your party, or others like you, you might be able to get a berth. But don’t think, my son, that your transit visa will be assured, and even if it were! In the meantime, so much time has passed that the main goal, your primary one, has disappeared. Your visa has expired, and as vital as the transit visa is, it isn’t worth anything without a visa, and so on and so forth. Now, son, imagine that you’ve managed to do it. Good, let’s both dream that you’ve done it. You have them all — your visa, your transit visa, your exit visa. You’re ready to start your journey. You’ve said goodbye to your loved ones and tossed your life over your shoulder. You’re thinking only of your goal, your destination. You finally want to board the ship. For example: yesterday, I was talking with a young man your age. He had everything. But then when he was ready to board his ship, the harbour authorities refused to give him the last stamp he needed.”
“Why?”
“He had escaped from a camp when the Germans were coming.” The old man said this in the weary tone of voice he had been using before. He seemed to sink into himself. Yet his posture was too erect — it was more that he sagged. “The fellow didn’t have a certificate of release from the camp — so it was all for nothing.”
Translated from German by Margot Bettauer Dembo
CESARE PAVESE
Lo Steddazzu
The lonely man wakes while the sea is still dark
and the stars are shuddering. A warmish breeze
rises from the shore, where the seabed lies,
to sweeten one’s breath. This is the hour when nothing
can happen. Even the pipe between his teeth
hangs unlit. Nocturnal is the water’s subdued swash.
The lonely man has already lit a bonfire of branches
and watches it redden the landscape. Even the sea
will soon resemble the fire and its blazing shine.
There’s nothing more bitter than the dawn of a day
when nothing will happen. Nothing more bitter
than pointlessness. A greenish star hangs
exhausted in the sky, taken aback by the dawn.
It watches the still-dark sea and the blotch of fire
where the man keeps warm, if only to stay busy;
it watches and falls sleep-heavy between murky mountains
where a bed of snow awaits it. The slowness of this hour
is ruthless to those who no longer expect anything.
Is there a point to the sun rising from the sea
and for the long day to begin? Tomorrow,
the warmish dawn will return with its silky light,
it’ll be like yesterday and nothing will happen.
The lonely man would like only to sleep.
When the last star goes dead in the sky,
the man carefully fills his pipe, and lights it.
Translated from Italian by André Naffis-Sahely
YANNIS RITSOS
A Break in Routine
They came to the door and read names from a list
.
If you heard your name you had to get ready fast:
a busted suitcase, a bundle you might carry
over your shoulder, perhaps; forget the rest.
With each new departure, the place seemed to shrink.
Finally, those who were left agreed to bunk
in a single room, which no one thought odd.
They found an old alarm clock
and placed it just here, in the hearth,
a little household god,
and made a rota for who would wind it and set it
to ring at six-thirty, in time for their needle-bath.
Once, it went off at midnight, whereat they woke
and sluiced themselves under the moon, then sat
in a circle round the clock
to smoke the last of their cigarettes.
Translated from Greek by David Harsent
CARLOS BULOSAN
American History
“… this is what I say: I am suffering because
I am a radical, and indeed I am a radical;
I have suffered because I was an Italian, and indeed
I am an Italian. I have suffered more for my family
than for myself; but I am so convinced to be right
that you can only kill me once but if you could
execute me two other times, I would live again
to do what I have done already. I have finished.
Thank you…”
Vanzetti, the dreamy fish-peddler,
hurt but not alone in the alien courtroom,
voicing the sentiments of millions in his voice;
to scorning men voicing the voice of nations
in one stream of sentiments in his gentle voice,
that justice and tolerance might live for every one.
“… but remember always, Dante, in the play
of happiness, don’t use all for yourself only,
but down yourself just one step, at your side
and help the weak ones that cry for help: they are
your friends: they are the comrades that fight
for the conquest of the joy of freedom for all.
In this struggle of life you will find more love
and you will be loved…”
Sacco, the good shoemaker,
dreaming of the future with the poet that never was,
in spheres of tragic light, dreaming of the world
that never was, as each tragic moment passed
in streams of vivid light, to radiate a harmony
of thought and action that never came to pass.
Our agony is our triumph: Sacco and Vanzetti.
BARBARA TOPORSKA
The Chronicle
In memory of Stanisław Kodź (1898-1966)
Dr (of Law) A. Lonely
political émigré
died
on Sunday
of heart failure
at a Munich hotel.
There is snow in the street
this November in Munich
the walls swayed like veils
the ceiling came down
and dusk glazed the windows
with a silver-like silence
then night brushed it off
with the glare of the streetlights.
In the morning the phone rang
servants knocked at the door
locksmith
policeman
doctor —
death was sudden and lonely.
While Lonely — he sails
far away by his lonesome
on this ashen grey Sunday
with snow at the window
growing younger each moment
than all things on the course
of this Europe in autumn
this Munich in autumn.
*
Full stop. End of entry.
“Political commentary?”
cold
cigarette
smoke
in a lump of soil from the homeland.
Translated from Polish by Boris Dralyuk
SILVA KAPUTIKYAN
Perhaps
Perhaps you became so small, Armenia
so we could carry you in our hearts.
Perhaps you changed into charred parchment
so we would tremble lest you fall apart.
Perhaps your handful of soil was meant
as talisman, lesson, and exercise.
Your name became the symbol, perhaps,
for purification in a world of lies.
Translated from Armenian by Diana Der-Hovanessian
ALESSANDRO SPINA
The Fort at Régima
Captain Valentini received the order to join the regiment stationed at Régima to the south of the city. “You’ll miss everything there,” his predecessor had warned him, “not just danger or action, there isn’t even a reason for keeping the place garrisoned. You never get any orders. You must look on the High Command the way one beholds a higher power. It’s useless to ask for any signs or explanations. The High Command won’t remember you until they need you to go somewhere, or want you to come back, that is if they even remember that you’re still out there.” The Captain was nevertheless glad to go. His departure for that fort presented itself as an opportunity to subtract himself from everything: General Occhipinti and the military parades, the Officers’ Club, the speeches by the Secretary of the local Fascist party, the five German girls and their papier-mâché train at the Berenice Cinema and the evening walks alongside the main avenue… all would be swept away. Solitude, he reflected, is the epitome of subtracting oneself from life and it is blessed for this very reason. The fort was situated on a hill. The brief walk to the top was pleasant. The path was slightly uneven. Not a single tree in sight for over thirty miles. The fort, one part of which lay in complete abandon, had a medieval feel to it, a feature the original builders had probably wanted (first the Turks, then the Italian colonial government), and had decided to enhance it with useless battlements. However, time had worked its magic on those imitation battlements, and the inclemency of the elements had endowed the fort with a hard-edged, aristocratic sheen. More than Western medieval structures, it recalled the castles the knights had built in Greece during the Fourth Crusade. The landscape was identical. The Captain’s armoured car tottered along a path strewn with stones. Sometimes it ventured into open fields, where the ground was often more level than the path itself. “Had I come on horseback, the journey might have been more comfortable.” As with the celebrated Knight of La Mancha, the Captain had many famous examples in mind: Anseau de Cayeux, Thierry de Tenremonde, Orry de Lisle, Guido di Conflans, Macario de Sainte Menehould, Bègue de Fransures, Conon de Béthume, Milon le Brèbant, Païen d’Orléans, Peter of Bracieux, Baldovino di Beauvoir, Hugues de Beaumetz, Gautier d’Escornai, Dreux de Beaurain… the Captain proved unable to stop thinking about the legacies of these knights. They had conquered Constantinople, made and unmade emperors, and had carved the vast empire into feuds; they had scrambled hither and thither throughout the lengths of the Empire vainly trying to sustain an order, which, lacking any roots in that country, was ultimately fated to die. All that remained of those knights was their fortresses, like gigantic carcasses of vanquished animals. Nothing connected those knights to anything that had come before them, and nothing survived their slaughter. The empire had simply swatted them away, like flies. As the Captain bounced around in his armoured car, it struck him that repeating the same sequence of events so many centuries later was both cruel and unbearable.
Translated from Italian by André Naffis-Sahely
MIGUEL MARTINEZ
Spanish Anarchists in Exile in Algeria
On 19th March 1939, my father was forced to flee Spain due to the victory of Franco’s troops. With him went his partner and two children, which was unusual, for the vast majority of fugitives had been forced to set off alone as per instructions from their trade unions or, more rarely, fo
r personal reasons. I was seven years old at the time. The war that ended in defeat for the anti-Francoists lingered as the backdrop to my childhood. All I can remember of it are a few striking eruptions. On the other hand, I spent the long period of exile that followed surrounded throughout my childhood and early youth by comrades who had themselves also been landed in Oran, then a French colonial port, from a trawler in March 1939. Our exile started once we were ashore. The French police were waiting for us on the dockside. We found ourselves being treated, not as fighters against fascist rule, but as common criminals. We were lashed and scattered through concentration camps, some of us never to return. The camps in Colomb-Béchar, Boghari and Djelfa were nothing better than punishment centres. My father spent six months in Boghari, at the end of which he was transferred to Carnot where his wife and two children had been waiting for him to be released from prison. Carnot was a family reunification camp which I have to admit could not be compared with the sinister prisons named earlier. My father eventually secured a certificate allowing him to take up a job at a hairdressers’ in Orleansville and we were allowed to leave Carnot after an enforced stay of over a year. Fleeing the malaria raging on the Cheliff plains, we moved on to the capital, Algiers, where a number of other comrades had also sought refuge.
The Heart of a Stranger Page 19
