<p>426. ON TRANSLATING «EUGENE ONEGIN»
<a l:href="#c_455"><sup>{*}</sup></a></p>1What is translation? On a platterA poet's pale and glaring heard,A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter,And profanation of the dead.The parasites you were so hard onAre pardoned if I have your pardon,O, Pushkin, for my stratagem:I traveled down your secret stem,And reached the root, and fed upon it;Then, in a language newly learned,I grew another stem and turnedYour stanza patterned on a sonnet,Into my honest roadside prose —All thorn, but cousin to your rose.2Reflected words can only shiverLike elongated lights that twistIn the black mirror of a riverBetween the city and the mist.Elusive Pushkin! Persevering,I still pick up Tatiana's earring,Still travel with your sullen rake.I find another man's mistake,I analyze alliterationsThat grace your feasts and haunt the greatFourth stanza of your Canto Eight.This is my task — a poet's patienceAnd scholiastic passion blent:Dove-droppings on your monument.<p>427. RAIN
<a l:href="#c_456"><sup>{*}</sup></a></p>How mobile is the bed on thesenights of gesticulating trees when the rain clatters fast,the tin-toy rain with dapper hooftrotting upon an endless roof, traveling into the past.Upon old roads the steeds of rainSlip and slow down and speed again through many a tangled year;but they can never reach the lastdip at the bottom of the past because the sun is there.1956
