Tension Rises by Dmitry Golynko, Translated by Cilla McQueen and Jacob Edmond

high tension
you will contrive to play with us
bends over, to
fix on one point

a pantomime character
got toasted in the sun                
none too soon
intoxication sets in
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
to raise tension
blow the nose, a dried fruit
wrinkled is chewed
and the gruel crawls out

in due course, what in a goddess
doesn’t satisfy a mortal is
a bad smell acquired by her                                                   
through self-contempt
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
tension will rise, should
you get the hots for, try it
those loosened by paradontosis
masticate in the subconscious

impresses an attraction                                                    
not to the usual filth, such as
blah, blah, to the particular
rhythm tapped out
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
envy raises tension
pissing envious
where slops on the sly
stream together

pulverized spanners
in the wrong works, still
in the company the joker
started his own bullshit
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
tension rises when the beam
of the searchlight goes blind, over their faces
the punch spreads
a small haematoma cloud

completely off his head he
got his brains set so straight, turned
all eyes on himself, having butted the punching bag
the fist moved back
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
the tension is increased by the weather,
slushy, a small piebald pooch
whimpers, pink tongue
roughens

in the moment of licking
unknown things, they bought
lots of booze and by agreement
without twisting arms
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
heightened tension threatens
in the anger of a being of the highest ranks
or a wench’s laughter, gathering strength
from its habit of helplessness

to achieve a good chunk
chopped off, enough
to smooth out the place of removal
and level what is unnecessary


12–16 February 2004

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Дмитрий Голынко

Напряжение повышается

напряженье высокое
вы сыграть сумеете с нами
наклоняется над, чтобы
уставиться в одну точку

опереточный персонаж
перегрелся на солнце
чуть позже, чем бы хотелось
опьянение наступает
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
чтоб напряженье повысить
надо высморкаться, сухофрукт
сморщенный разжеван
и кашица выползает

своим чередом, что в богине
не устраивает смертного, это
дурной запах, ею приобретенный
от пренебреженья к себе
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
напряженье повысится, если
втрескаться в, попробуйте
расшатанные пародонтозом
пережевывают, в подсознанку

впечаталось влеченье
не к обычной пакости, типа
тыры-пыры, к особенному
дробь отбарабанили
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
напряжение повышает зависть
писающая кипятком туда
где втихаря помои
сливают в них же самих

перемолотые кости
не в том горле, еще живехонек
в компании приколист
завел свое трали-вали
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
напряженье повысится, когда луч
прожектора слепнет, по мордасам
данный тумак растекается
облачком гематомы

на всю голову трахнутому
так вправили мозги, и весь внимание
обратил на себя, грушу боднув
кулак двинулся в обратную
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
напряженье повысит погода
слякотная, песик с подпалинами
поскуливает, розовый язык
приобретает шероховатость

в момент облизывания
незнакомых вещей, накупили
винища и по согласию
без выкручивания рук
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
повышением напряженья грозит
гнев существа из разряда высших
или бабский смех, набирающий силу
от привычки к беспомощности

чтобы просечь, откуда оттяпан
кусман хороший, достаточно
место отъема подгладить
и ненужное подравнять

12–16 февраля 2004 года

editor: Orchid Tierney

I would like to thank Dmitry Golynko, Cilla McQueen, and Jacob Edmond for allowing me to post this poem and its translation, which first appeared in Landfall 213 (May 2007) and subsequentlly in Ka Mate Ka Ora 11. Click the link to read about how Jacob and Cilla approached the translation process. The poem's new title is "Высокое напряжение" but I have retained the original appellation.

Dmitry Golynko is a poet, literary and art critic whose innovative poetry enshrines a keen examination on the interconnections between post-Soviet language and society. He is the author of Homo Scribens (1994), Directory (2001), and Concrete Doves (2003) and has published critical essays on contemporary art and literature.  His book As It Turned Out is his first English language release and is available from the esteemed publisher Ugly Duckling Press. I recommend visiting Penn Sound to hear some his recordings.

Cilla McQueen is a former Burns Fellow and New Zealand Poet Laureate. She has published ten volumes of poetry and she has won numerous awards, including the Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement (Poetry) in 2010.  In addition, she has scooped up the New Zealand Book award for Poetry three times. 

Jacob Edmond is a senior lecturer at the University of Otago. His book A Common Strangeness has been recently published by Fordham University Press and his articles have appeared in a number of journals including Comparative Literature, Contemporary Literature, Poetics Today, The China Quarterly, and the Slavic and East European Journal.

Please take some time to experience the marvellous selections of poetry from the Tuesday Poem community. You can find these listed along at the sidebar.

Orchid Tierney is a poet and an MA candidate at the University of Otago, New Zealand. 

 

Poems for National Poetry Day (NZ)

from The Radio Room by Cilla McQueen (Otago University Press 2010)

About The Fog

Damp sea-fog lay like a sheep on my journal

outside all night on the table,

turned radiant blue ink to turquoise wash

through which the permanent horizons stared

twenty-eight pages empty.

                                                Of vanished thoughts here

and there word-slivers, blots in the gutter, bled edges;

some legible sentences in ballpoint.

As if by tears

                        lost the death of my mother,

the reunion with my tokotoko at Matahiwi,

Orepuki Hopupu ho nengenenge matangi rau

at hand beside me now, ribboned, knotty, sleek,

Washed away, goes without saying, language

absorbed by a fog to dissolve in the sun.

from The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls by Kate Camp (VUP 2010)

When things get broken we recount their history

On blue and orange lino tiles

triangles of the tulip glass

of the four I bought

from a tent

by the underground city

two with cracks

were nestled in newspaper.

The stallholders

of Turkey

do not love me

after all.

One by one

I am smashing

the knickknacks

of the past.

To smithereens I blow

the family of owls

and tragically the tiny glass

hand-painted flowers

we drank from

through baby teeth.

When the house was burgled

they broke the mirror tile

saw there a picture

of themselves.

There is all the time in the world

to regret

when something is falling

coffee pours up

from the cup

the plate turns

its soft food

towards the floor.

An earthquake

would be

an explosion

of memory

jars

blasting open

peaches

glass

and syrup.

from Mauri Ola – Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English (Whetu Moana II), a poem by Alohi Ae’a (Hawaii), collection edited by Albert Wendt, Reina Whaitiri and Robert Sullivan (AUP 2010)

Hālāwai 

I dream that you stand beneath the night

sky, watching the stars. You track

their movements, as the dome of the earth swings

overhead. The star you seek rises

and there, as it breaks the horizon, you turn. Face

Tahiti. The wind is silent at this moment. I turn

in bed; the air is cool.

Such small things keep us together. I work

the sennit of our love, roll it between

my fingers. Next week, I will help you lash

the masts. In the open ocean, the ropes we pull

will keep this canoe together. It will rise

and fall with wind and wave and storm. You go

with it. I remain here.

You sit at Moa’iki under the full bright

of a distant moon.  At Waikīkī, moonlight

makes little difference – yet here I am at Queen’s,

watching the waves swell dark

against a grey horizon. I catch my breath – see

the shower of light falling, falling. I find the handful

of constellations that I know. Grip them in my mind.

Nine a.m. Sunday morning, Dolphins spin

far offshore. I see their bellies flash silver. You

want to reach out and touch them, strike the sleek pulse

of their sides. What does all that smoothness

remind you of? What are you thinking as the wind

catches in the sails? How is it that I can hear your voice,

echoing across the distant channels?

                                                    

                                                            Editor Renee Liang

This week, we celebrate New Zealand's upcoming National Poetry Day (July 22) with not one, but three poems.  I’ve chosen those which called to me the most, from the pages of the shortlisted books for the poetry section of the 2011 NZ Post National Book Awards. It’s a purely personal pick, and quite possibly I would have picked a different bunch on a different day. Looking at them now I’m amazed at how much they resonate with each other. The books (all remarkable collections) are so varied in mood and theme.

The Radio Room by Cilla McQueen is a work held together by the delicate strands of space and time. Traversing geographical and ideological boundaries, the poems remind me of sketches in a day journal, some quick impressions, others much more detailed, worked and returned to.  Behind it all is Cilla’s forthwright and direct voice, offering personal events as a microcosm of universal experience.

Kate Camp’s The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls is a much more intellectual work, basing itself on a found text (the first Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls, an early 14th century work of Christian mysticism by Marguerite Porete) and extending this as a lens on the present time and place.  She manages to take a medieval European work and make it modern, and in some ways quite “Kiwi”.

Mauri Ola – Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English (Whetu Moana II) edited by Albert Wendt, Reina Whaitiri and Robert Sullivan, is possibly best described as a treasury of the Pacific voice.  The work selected covers poets throughout Polynesia, including many emerging and established voices in Aotearoa. Many of the poems deal with the discovery or claiming of identity, or the facets of daily experience that make up a culture.  There’s a fair amount of anger as well as humour, but overriding it all is a joy in finding expression.

So what have I chosen?  Three poems that all, in the different voices of their writers, deal with the loss of loved ones through the physical remembrance of objects. Cilla’s poem, evoking the loss of a journal, the favourite tool of this writer, but with a wry hope in the closing line that maybe the words will have gone to a better place.

Kate’s poem which weaves objects bought on OE with childhood items and which in its closing stanzas refers to the small but significant losses a natural disaster like an earthquake can bring.  Somehow, I find her simple inventory of objects more poignant than all the news images of broken buildings. And Alohi Ae’a’ (a Hawaiian writer) who so beautifully uses the metaphor of a boat to sail across space and time to join her loved one.

I’m in Christchurch at the moment and walk to work every day past buildings that are broken, that symbolize loss, yet by their loss remind us of the important links to the past.  I think that’s why I like these poems – they rebuild in words the lost objects, acting as both commemoration and reconstruction. Lost things are less lost if they are found again in poetry.

The winner of the NZ Book Award for poetry will be announced on National Poetry Day. After you've read the selected poems here, look into the Tuesday Poets on the live blog roll to the right, many of whom will be celebrating Poetry Day.

This week's Tuesday Poem editor is Renee Liang, an Auckland poet, playwright and paediatrician. Some of her poetry can be found on her blog Chinglish, and her new play FAAB is on in Auckland and Wellington in September and October.