The Tomb of Edgar Allan Poe

Such as at last eternity transforms into Himself,

The Poet rouses with two-edged naked sword,
His century terrified at having ignored
Death triumphant in so strange a voice!

They, like a spasm of the Hydra, hearing the angel

Once grant a purer sense to the words of the tribe,
Loudly proclaimed it a magic potion, imbibed
From some tidal brew black, and dishonourable.

From soil, and hostile cloud, O grief,

If our imagination can’t carve a bas-relief
With which to deck Poe’s dazzling sepulchre,

Calm block fallen here from some dark disaster,

Let your granite at least mark a boundary forever
To dark flights of Blasphemy scattered in the future.

Do Something
We can't just look on.
Even if we can't stop anything
we must say what we think.
(Do something. Do something.
Anything. Do something, then.)
Indignation, annoyance, rage looked for their adjectives.
Indignation called itself righteous.
Soon people spoke of everyday annoyance.
Rage fell into impotence: impotent rage.
I speak of the protest poem
and against the protest poem.
(Once I saw recruits taking the oath
unswear it behind their backs with crossed fingers.)
Impotently I protest against impotent protests.
What I mean is Easter, silence and peace marches.
What I mean is the hundred good names
underneath seven true sentences.
What I mean is guitars and similar
protest instruments conducive to records.
I speak of the wooden sword and the missing tooth,
of the protest poem.

Just as steel has its booms, so poetry has its booms.

Rearmament opens markets for anti-war poems.
The cost of production is low.
Take an eighth of righteous indignation,
two eighths of everyday annoyance
and five eighths -- to heighten that flavour -- of impotent rage.
For medium-sized feelings against the war
are cheaply obtained
and have been shopsoiled ever since Troy.
(Do something. Do something.
Anything. Do something, then.)

One lets off steam: already righteous indignation goes up in smoke.

The small everyday annoyance makes the safety valves hiss.
Impotent rage discharges itself, fills a balloon with gas,
then rises, rises, grows smaller and smaller, is gone.
Are poems breathing excercises?
If that is their function, -- and prosaic
as my grandfather, I ask what their function is --
then poetry is therapy.
Is a poem a weapon?
Some, too heavily armed,can hardly walk.
They have to use their disatisfaction with circumstances
as a vehicle:
they reach their destination, they can hit their mark:
first the weekly paper, then the anthology:
The napalm metaphor and its permutations
is the protest poem of the 'sixties.
I mean poems that are tracts.
Righteous indignation enumerates terrors and miseries.
Everyday annoyance discovers the rhyme for no bread.
Impotent rage sets people talking breathlessly about itself.
(Do something. Do something...)
There are laws of leverage.
But they hold it against the stone
that will not budge.
Next day the helpless style of well-founded protest
acts as a bait for the well-aimed style of smooth refutation.
Since in the cause they are always right
but all too easily slip over details
the signatories tacitly half-dissociate themselves
from the authors and from their protests.
(Not only burglars buy gloves.)
What remains is:resilient misunderstandings
quote one another. Erroneous corrections
learn from guinea pigs
how to breed so that no one keeps track.

The stone takes pity and acts

as though it had been moved:
while indignation, annoyance and rage interrupt one another,
the specialists in power
appear smiling in front of the public. They make well-informed
speeches
about the price demanded for freedom:
about napalm and its deterrent effects;
about well-founded protests and understandable rage.
All this is permitted.
Since power respects only power
impotent protest is allowed to carry on
until, because the noise is disturbing,
protest is no longer allowed. --
But we despise power.
We are not powerful, we keep assuring each other.
Without power we enjoy our impotence.
We do not want power; but power has us. --
Now righteous indignation feels misunderstood.
Our everyday annoyance ends in silent marches
that have first been announced and permitted.
Our impotent rage runs around in circles.
This provokes the equally righteous indignation
of angered policemen:
impotent rage becomes aggressive.
The fist grows into a head
and thinks in terms of low blows hooks to the liver knuckle-hard.
(Do something. Do something...)
All this becomes institutionalized, and by power
is caressed beaten subsidized.
Already the stone that was to be moved
gathers moss, unmoved.
Can we go on like that? -- Yes, in a circle.
What shall we do? -- Not anything.
How express our rage?-- I know a recipe:

Strike nails into the sound barrier.

Behead dandelions and candles.
Assert yourselves on the couch.
We still feel rage.
Already we're hoarse all over.
We're against everything, vainly.
What else can we do now?
How shall we express our rage?
Do something. Do something.
We must do something or other,
do something, do it.
Come on, then, quickly protest.
That fellow won't join our protest.
Come on, then, quickly sign.
You've always been against it.
Those who don't sign are for it.
Lovely is rage in the paddock,
before it is fed.
For a long time impotence ran around in the rain,
but now it is drying its socks.
Rage and safety valves, about them a song;
Impotence, your needle's eye is a song.
Because I can't do anything,
because I can't do anything
I'm full of rage, I'm full of rage.
Do something, then. Do something.
Anything. Do something, then.
We must do something or other,
does no good, does no good,
we must do something or other,
do something, do it.
Silently march in protest.
Have done it once, have done it.
Write a poem, then.
Have written it, have done it.
Cook some brawn. Pig's head brawn:
let impotence jell, rage quiver in sympathy.
I know a recipe; who'll follow it cooking?
 BABI YAR
By Yevgeni Yevtushenko
Translated by Benjamin Okopnik, 10/96

No monument stands over Babi Yar.

A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone.
I am afraid.
Today, I am as old
As the entire Jewish race itself.

I see myself an ancient Israelite.

I wander o’er the roads of ancient Egypt
And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured
And even now, I bear the marks of nails.

It seems to me that Dreyfus is myself. *1*

The Philistines betrayed me – and now judge.
I’m in a cage. Surrounded and trapped,
I’m persecuted, spat on, slandered, and
The dainty dollies in their Brussels frills
Squeal, as they stab umbrellas at my face.

I see myself a boy in Belostok *2*

Blood spills, and runs upon the floors,
The chiefs of bar and pub rage unimpeded
And reek of vodka and of onion, half and half.

I’m thrown back by a boot, I have no strength left,

In vain I beg the rabble of pogrom,
To jeers of “Kill the Jews, and save our Russia!”
My mother’s being beaten by a clerk.
 O, Russia of my heart, I know that you
Are international, by inner nature.
But often those whose hands are steeped in filth
Abused your purest name, in name of hatred.

I know the kindness of my native land.

How vile, that without the slightest quiver
The antisemites have proclaimed themselves
The “Union of the Russian People!”

It seems to me that I am Anna Frank,

Transparent, as the thinnest branch in April,
And I’m in love, and have no need of phrases,
But only that we gaze into each other’s eyes.
How little one can see, or even sense!
Leaves are forbidden, so is sky,
But much is still allowed – very gently
In darkened rooms each other to embrace.

-“They come!”

-“No, fear not – those are sounds

Of spring itself. She’s coming soon.
Quickly, your lips!”

-“They break the door!”

-“No, river ice is breaking…”

Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar,

The trees look sternly, as if passing judgement.
Here, silently, all screams, and, hat in hand,
I feel my hair changing shade to gray.
 And I myself, like one long soundless scream
Above the thousands of thousands interred,
I’m every old man executed here,
As I am every child murdered here.

No fiber of my body will forget this.

May “Internationale” thunder and ring *3*
When, for all time, is buried and forgotten
The last of antisemites on this earth.

There is no Jewish blood that’s blood of mine,

But, hated with a passion that’s corrosive
Am I by antisemites like a Jew.
And that is why I call myself a Russian!

Lies
Lying to the young is wrong.
Proving to them that lies are true is wrong.
Telling them
that God’s in his heaven
and all’s well with the world
is wrong.
They know what you mean.
They are people too.
Tell them the difficulties
can’t be counted,
and let them see
not only
what will be
but see
with clarity
these present times.
Say obstacles exist they must encounter,
sorrow comes,
hardship happens.
The hell with it.
Who never knew
the price of happiness
will not be happy.
Forgive no error
you recognize,
it will repeat itself,
a hundredfold
and afterward
our pupils
will not forgive in us
what we forgave.

1952Translated by Robin Milner-Gulland and Peter Levi (revised)

Yevgeny Yevtushenko