Irina Dobrushina
translated by Nika Skandiaka
Behind the house there's a garden.
You can see the road from there.
Who wouldn't want to run away?
Soon I will run away.
And this is Katya.
I love her doll so!
It's rubber, very smooth, very pink.
I'm going to swipe it now.
By-loo, my donny,
By-loo, my darling.
Yipe, somebody's coming!
Hide, hide, quick!
No one must see you.
Then how will I play with you?
By-loo, my donny.
You're going back to Katya now.
I'll bring you.
Why isn't Mom coming out?
Why don't I see any people?
I'll go look at the road,
Maybe run away.
* * *
A wall is in front of me.
Lit windows are in it.
It is considered that people live there.
But this is a wastrel plane.
* * *
Left-shouldered
Someone on his left,
Right-shouldered
Someone on his right,
And walked on straight
Between buildings
And did not stop till the nursery school
Was staring at him.
* * *
The curtain hid the cactus
Which bloomed that night.
The blood sunflower gleamed
And (when it wanted to) died.
* * *
Gabriac*,
Gabriac,
You won't be touched,
You only look
When no one can see.
And Grandma fired up
The stove with you,
Put a raging ogre
On top of you,
Threw in a hobgoblin,
With a witch raked you,
To pitch-black coals,
Slender deer, baked you.
Gabriac,
Gabriac,
And I've let you be.
You smile at me
When no one can see.
*(Author's note:) A devil's name, and that of a sea-polished fragment of grapevine which calls to mind this devil (residing in Voloshin's house in Koktebel). His relative, the peerless Cerubina, bore the same name. In our day, the folk of Koktebel refer by the name of gabriac to any found fragment of vine which calls anything at all to their minds.
* * *
Thoughts roaming about,
Thoughts roaming the house,
They should be alone,
But they will run after,
But they will run after.
Maybe we should switch ours,
Do you want to switch? Or
You can just have mine.
* * *
Shreds of newspaper in the air,
Shreds of snow in the air,
Shreds of people in the air.
God knows what is in the air.
* * *
Rats caught in a mousetrap
Smartly freed themselves.
Scurried about the flat, squealing,
Seeking things to eat, nix, gnaw
A hole in the floor.
I saw a tail on the floor
Large as life (a rat's)
And bit it off.
* * *
I fled from there forevermore.
I'd fled forever nine times before.
I will come back no more, no more,
Oh what a stinker, what a stinker, oh,
I know I'm gonna, I know I'm gonna.
I know I'm drawn there so.
* * *
Once upon
Will see another
Once, once upon will fall
For the other
Once, once upon will
Rush from the other
Once, once, once upon will
Forget the other.
And once upon will no
Longer be for the other
Once.
* * *
A fearful wind reels.
Hide from the wheels,
Hide your eyes,
This is
Yes.
A far sky stirs,
Reeds stretch their flanks.
* * *
Silence, then.
A distraught and restless soul's
Best celebration.
* * *
And a light breeze
I barely see through a sheet of thin sky...
* * *
Amid the rain, lone drops.
* * *
Lie down and think.
Moths flit.
A gnat lands on my arm
And carefully
Attaches her proboscis to it.
I slap - cunning, she vanishes
And circles again.
The moths, the gnat, a book -
The night is over.
Birds have woken up.
One must live again.
* * *
Want a cat.
And she is
A nocturnal animal.
Just when I fall asleep,
She'll take up walking upon me.
* * *
Pockets heavy with poems,
I travel light with me.
I don't know where I'm going,
And why should I, at all?
And I fly when I feel like.
Would you know not to fall?
Unfashionable, this levitation,
Especially among my nation.
I flew away and met her,
The butterfly, my sister.
Day-flies in nature,
We'll cry together.
* * *
I shall comb my hair
And wear a crafty dress.
I want to taste.
Of what?
The fruit?
Yes, that?
Or not?
And guess
Whose raving is ready to run
Across paper foliage?
For that, one must have courage.
* * *
Sunrise and birdsong
Are competing.
* * *
I am drawn to the old
Who are children
Not grown childish
And - with their spirit,
Smile,
Independence
And courage -
Stronger than the young.
* * *
The labyrinth of my senses.
No exit,
No entrance.
* * *
Mirrors have beckoned to me since childhood,
In them, a human is forever changing.
My mirror and I have been together
Since I was twelve.
I see in it the steppe and mountains.
* * *
With broken language
To express drowsiness
I fail.
* * *
Insomnia, my own sister,
It is absurd even to think of you.
* * *
The rain a drizzle.
Soft mud.
Clap on a dark beret
And go count crows
At Moscow's dumps.
* * *
Weakness and wilt wearily fan me,
Tender flesh stirs in a rusty body.
Lightsomely I will throw off the blanket
And dance and play on the tortured beach.
* * *
O Eros, friend, melodious sculptor,
Your careless hand will throw a mantle
Like an alarm bell over both.
Lioness Hunt
In memory of V.G. Veysberg
I am sitting in a dim cave
on some, probably marble, couch.
It is covered with a large number of skins and rugs.
I tuck under myself
the cushions strewn about
to make myself more comfortable.
There are many people in the cave behind me and to the right,
but I pay them no attention:
I am so gripped by what I see
through the tall and narrow breach in the wall.
This blue,
this improbably blue sky,
and on its background, the ridge of the mountain,
dropping from right to left
before my face.
Just below the ridge,
nearly repeating its pattern,
a trail runs in a narrow bas-relief.
Some sections of it are level,
on some it makes a light leap down.
These transitions are without sharp edges,
like rocks well worn by the sea.
This is the trail lionesses take to water.
"Will you lead the hunt?"
(I heard a woman's voice.)
"All right. I will." (A man's.)
"This is the way I like it!
Not having to persuade anyone
or explain anything."
The hunters set themselves up somewhere behind me.
They would be shooting
through the crack in the wall of the cave.
Then the lionesses appeared.
How strangely they move down their trail.
They hug it closely, closely,
and all but slide over the stones.
At the trail's stammers they make no leaps
but flow across slowly,
pressing into the nearly vertical stretches.
Suddenly an arrow flew,
a shot resounded,
the hunt began.
The lionesses died in silence,
Falling somewhere below,
Nearly all of them dying.
Finally they were no more.
Everything was over.
I sat as in a trance
before the breach
and for a long time couldn't even stir.
It was as though there never had been
this terrible and unequal
(and when is it ever equal?)
hunt.
The hunters had gone away
and I was alone.
And it must be forever
that I would remember this landscape:
a brilliant blue sky,
and the orange-red sandstone of the trail
mostly tracing the ridge,
and the flowing mass of lionesses,
dying just like that,
for the sake of some people's fun.
* * *
The space around me is
Tense and resilient.
I move forward,
Slitting it like water.
It resists
Yet gives in.
Light-gray like a soft snow-blast
It streams around me,
Nurses on me
Like the cloth of a dress during rain.
With difficulty I pass
Through the slow, heavy air.
It is alien and hostile,
It throngs and smothers.
I separate it from my body,
Push it farther and farther back,
Try to dilute it to nothing.
And gradually it recedes.
I am alone -
A solitary tree in a field.
And this solitude
Is light and delightful and fresh,
Like morning dew
Evaporating in the sun.
Irina Dobrushina, a mathematician and poet, was born in 1928 in Poltava and lived in Moscow from 1931 until her death in 2014. In 1953, she graduated in mathematics with a speciaization in topology from Moscow State University, where her advisor was L. S. Pontryagin. She worked at the Moscow Planetarium (1953-1955) while also teaching at Moscow Aviation Institute (1953-1956). In 1960-1961 she worked in the machine translation department of the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages. She was disabled since 1961.
She owed her love of poetry to her mother, who, in addition to being a connoisseur of poetry, assembled a collection of poetry books that was unique for its time (the collection was almost entirely lost in the evacuation in Omsk and Alma-Ata during WWII).
Irina Dobrushina began to write poetry (mostly epigrams, occasional verse, and similar) as a
child but did not take it seriously at the time.
In 1968, she met Vladimir Gertsik; together, they decided to reject everything written until that year and begin anew.
Her poetry has appeared, beginning in 1992, in the anthologies Tyoply Stan, Samizdatveka (Samizdat of the Century; 1997), and Novaya Stikhiya and the magazines Arion, Kreschatik and Kovcheg. Kolyuchiy kust (A Thorny Bush), a collection of poems and short stories, with her own artwork and graphic design, was published in 1996.
translated by Nika Skandiaka
Behind the house there's a garden.
You can see the road from there.
Who wouldn't want to run away?
Soon I will run away.
And this is Katya.
I love her doll so!
It's rubber, very smooth, very pink.
I'm going to swipe it now.
By-loo, my donny,
By-loo, my darling.
Yipe, somebody's coming!
Hide, hide, quick!
No one must see you.
Then how will I play with you?
By-loo, my donny.
You're going back to Katya now.
I'll bring you.
Why isn't Mom coming out?
Why don't I see any people?
I'll go look at the road,
Maybe run away.
* * *
A wall is in front of me.
Lit windows are in it.
It is considered that people live there.
But this is a wastrel plane.
* * *
Left-shouldered
Someone on his left,
Right-shouldered
Someone on his right,
And walked on straight
Between buildings
And did not stop till the nursery school
Was staring at him.
* * *
The curtain hid the cactus
Which bloomed that night.
The blood sunflower gleamed
And (when it wanted to) died.
* * *
Gabriac*,
Gabriac,
You won't be touched,
You only look
When no one can see.
And Grandma fired up
The stove with you,
Put a raging ogre
On top of you,
Threw in a hobgoblin,
With a witch raked you,
To pitch-black coals,
Slender deer, baked you.
Gabriac,
Gabriac,
And I've let you be.
You smile at me
When no one can see.
*(Author's note:) A devil's name, and that of a sea-polished fragment of grapevine which calls to mind this devil (residing in Voloshin's house in Koktebel). His relative, the peerless Cerubina, bore the same name. In our day, the folk of Koktebel refer by the name of gabriac to any found fragment of vine which calls anything at all to their minds.
* * *
Thoughts roaming about,
Thoughts roaming the house,
They should be alone,
But they will run after,
But they will run after.
Maybe we should switch ours,
Do you want to switch? Or
You can just have mine.
* * *
Shreds of newspaper in the air,
Shreds of snow in the air,
Shreds of people in the air.
God knows what is in the air.
* * *
Rats caught in a mousetrap
Smartly freed themselves.
Scurried about the flat, squealing,
Seeking things to eat, nix, gnaw
A hole in the floor.
I saw a tail on the floor
Large as life (a rat's)
And bit it off.
* * *
I fled from there forevermore.
I'd fled forever nine times before.
I will come back no more, no more,
Oh what a stinker, what a stinker, oh,
I know I'm gonna, I know I'm gonna.
I know I'm drawn there so.
* * *
Once upon
Will see another
Once, once upon will fall
For the other
Once, once upon will
Rush from the other
Once, once, once upon will
Forget the other.
And once upon will no
Longer be for the other
Once.
* * *
A fearful wind reels.
Hide from the wheels,
Hide your eyes,
This is
Yes.
A far sky stirs,
Reeds stretch their flanks.
* * *
Silence, then.
A distraught and restless soul's
Best celebration.
* * *
And a light breeze
I barely see through a sheet of thin sky...
* * *
Amid the rain, lone drops.
* * *
Lie down and think.
Moths flit.
A gnat lands on my arm
And carefully
Attaches her proboscis to it.
I slap - cunning, she vanishes
And circles again.
The moths, the gnat, a book -
The night is over.
Birds have woken up.
One must live again.
* * *
Want a cat.
And she is
A nocturnal animal.
Just when I fall asleep,
She'll take up walking upon me.
* * *
Pockets heavy with poems,
I travel light with me.
I don't know where I'm going,
And why should I, at all?
And I fly when I feel like.
Would you know not to fall?
Unfashionable, this levitation,
Especially among my nation.
I flew away and met her,
The butterfly, my sister.
Day-flies in nature,
We'll cry together.
* * *
I shall comb my hair
And wear a crafty dress.
I want to taste.
Of what?
The fruit?
Yes, that?
Or not?
And guess
Whose raving is ready to run
Across paper foliage?
For that, one must have courage.
* * *
Sunrise and birdsong
Are competing.
* * *
I am drawn to the old
Who are children
Not grown childish
And - with their spirit,
Smile,
Independence
And courage -
Stronger than the young.
* * *
The labyrinth of my senses.
No exit,
No entrance.
* * *
Mirrors have beckoned to me since childhood,
In them, a human is forever changing.
My mirror and I have been together
Since I was twelve.
I see in it the steppe and mountains.
* * *
With broken language
To express drowsiness
I fail.
* * *
Insomnia, my own sister,
It is absurd even to think of you.
* * *
The rain a drizzle.
Soft mud.
Clap on a dark beret
And go count crows
At Moscow's dumps.
* * *
Weakness and wilt wearily fan me,
Tender flesh stirs in a rusty body.
Lightsomely I will throw off the blanket
And dance and play on the tortured beach.
* * *
O Eros, friend, melodious sculptor,
Your careless hand will throw a mantle
Like an alarm bell over both.
Lioness Hunt
In memory of V.G. Veysberg
I am sitting in a dim cave
on some, probably marble, couch.
It is covered with a large number of skins and rugs.
I tuck under myself
the cushions strewn about
to make myself more comfortable.
There are many people in the cave behind me and to the right,
but I pay them no attention:
I am so gripped by what I see
through the tall and narrow breach in the wall.
This blue,
this improbably blue sky,
and on its background, the ridge of the mountain,
dropping from right to left
before my face.
Just below the ridge,
nearly repeating its pattern,
a trail runs in a narrow bas-relief.
Some sections of it are level,
on some it makes a light leap down.
These transitions are without sharp edges,
like rocks well worn by the sea.
This is the trail lionesses take to water.
"Will you lead the hunt?"
(I heard a woman's voice.)
"All right. I will." (A man's.)
"This is the way I like it!
Not having to persuade anyone
or explain anything."
The hunters set themselves up somewhere behind me.
They would be shooting
through the crack in the wall of the cave.
Then the lionesses appeared.
How strangely they move down their trail.
They hug it closely, closely,
and all but slide over the stones.
At the trail's stammers they make no leaps
but flow across slowly,
pressing into the nearly vertical stretches.
Suddenly an arrow flew,
a shot resounded,
the hunt began.
The lionesses died in silence,
Falling somewhere below,
Nearly all of them dying.
Finally they were no more.
Everything was over.
I sat as in a trance
before the breach
and for a long time couldn't even stir.
It was as though there never had been
this terrible and unequal
(and when is it ever equal?)
hunt.
The hunters had gone away
and I was alone.
And it must be forever
that I would remember this landscape:
a brilliant blue sky,
and the orange-red sandstone of the trail
mostly tracing the ridge,
and the flowing mass of lionesses,
dying just like that,
for the sake of some people's fun.
* * *
The space around me is
Tense and resilient.
I move forward,
Slitting it like water.
It resists
Yet gives in.
Light-gray like a soft snow-blast
It streams around me,
Nurses on me
Like the cloth of a dress during rain.
With difficulty I pass
Through the slow, heavy air.
It is alien and hostile,
It throngs and smothers.
I separate it from my body,
Push it farther and farther back,
Try to dilute it to nothing.
And gradually it recedes.
I am alone -
A solitary tree in a field.
And this solitude
Is light and delightful and fresh,
Like morning dew
Evaporating in the sun.
Irina Dobrushina, a mathematician and poet, was born in 1928 in Poltava and lived in Moscow from 1931 until her death in 2014. In 1953, she graduated in mathematics with a speciaization in topology from Moscow State University, where her advisor was L. S. Pontryagin. She worked at the Moscow Planetarium (1953-1955) while also teaching at Moscow Aviation Institute (1953-1956). In 1960-1961 she worked in the machine translation department of the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages. She was disabled since 1961.
She owed her love of poetry to her mother, who, in addition to being a connoisseur of poetry, assembled a collection of poetry books that was unique for its time (the collection was almost entirely lost in the evacuation in Omsk and Alma-Ata during WWII).
Irina Dobrushina began to write poetry (mostly epigrams, occasional verse, and similar) as a
child but did not take it seriously at the time.
In 1968, she met Vladimir Gertsik; together, they decided to reject everything written until that year and begin anew.
Her poetry has appeared, beginning in 1992, in the anthologies Tyoply Stan, Samizdatveka (Samizdat of the Century; 1997), and Novaya Stikhiya and the magazines Arion, Kreschatik and Kovcheg. Kolyuchiy kust (A Thorny Bush), a collection of poems and short stories, with her own artwork and graphic design, was published in 1996.