Four by David Burliuk
Translated from the Russian by Noam Hessler
Translator's note: David Burliuk was the founder of the cubofuturist artist group known as Hylea, to which Vladimir Mayakovsky, Velimir Khlebnikov, Aleksei Kruchenykh, and Kazimir Malevich, among others, were affiliated. A talented painter and an acceptable poet, futurism as an organized current in Russian poetry likely would not exist without Burliuk. His verse was surpassed by his young mentees, a fact Burliuk was, it seems, quite proud of. These translations attempt to maintain the awkward, sometimes deliberately incoherent grammars of Burliuk's poems in the original Russian. Slaughter Every Calf Slaughter every calf To quench appetites Chop the trees For burning firewood Dry the rivers Close at hand and far away, Gut the arches of the sky In a furious hopak Snuff every light Akin to bright delights Gut the arches of the sky Wild people!.. Hermit During the empty night left a homeless elder. He looked back not once, Not asked for by any, unnoticeable, He left the noisy garden. Let his forthcoming descendants rejoice: Indeed towards the past the gaze easily feebles. ‘Til the black grave his bindle Will not be free from his glad hands. But so what! Rejected by his homeland. In turn he rejected her, Learnt of cheap haggling Went often to the molding morgue. Like gray strands of hair Entwining the gaunt mourning of his shoulders, Winter — shapeless colossus — Grasps its subtle sword! And, touching, a pale ringing Drops steel, swarms of hopes Suffer casualties Beneath the poppycolor silence of their clothes. And only one in the leafs of lamps In the control of baseless lines, Pulling the moment’s trigger Plays merrily in tune. He Lived in a Squat Hut He lived in a squat hut And day and night And as the clouds running away In the crimson valley He whimsically closed with words The holes of the day And his neighbors shook their heads At him And then he built a palace And drove all away Unwieldily a calf towered Beholding the night Applause sustained The mob streamed Some kind of legends Fluttered ‘round the pillar The palace became his Golgotha So he who after all was Pilate He who knocked “onebrowed” On his plate armor You all are shackled in this cuirass By some hidden designs Of Fate. Fate to where did you drive Him from his post Fate, to whom Fate you told At the first hour. That the hall is empty And gas is dead. My Friends Where thought is fearless and the brow is proudly raised. Where thought is free. — Rabindranath Tagor. You awfully cheery children, Those who’ve stepped past thirty It’s not for You in this joyful world To bother with “vulgar” hackwork! It is not for You, bending at the desk Your young spines, To breathe the rancid atmosphere Of profit, papers, vanity. In the humdrum mire You are pure, Brave “knights of lions,” Skilled cannoneers Of the coming century of foundations. In the noble’s putrid paradise In the blunder of vanities You are not the lickers of boots, You who prop up the world.