#david mcduff

[majestativa]

Your glow’s dark burn. […] You, black star.

— ARVID MÖRNE ⚜️ Ice Around Our Lips: Finland-Swedish Poetry, transl. by David McDuff, (1989)

[llovelymoonn]

on hoping

leigh sugar freeland: an erasure \\ edvard munch separation \\ andre kohn exhausted \\ fyodor dostoevsky the brothers karamazov (tr. david mcduff) \\ jan van der kooi interior scenes \\ deborah landau soft targets: there were real officers in the streets (2019) \\ hope bruens sunrise \\ lucille clifton jasper texas 1998

kofi

[roseredfingers]

For the thundering glory of ages to come for the tall race of men I have given up both the cup at my fathers' feast and my mirth, my honor.

The wolf-fanged age hurls itself at my shoulders but I am no wolf by my blood, rather stuff me like a hat in the sleeve of the Siberian steppes' warm overcoat

that I may not see the coward, the soft bits of flesh, nor the bloody bones in the wheel, that all night the blue polar foxes may shine to me in their primal beauty.

Take me away into the night where the Yenisei flows and the pines grow to the stars, because I am no wolf by my blood, and only my equal will kill me.

—Selected Poems, Osip Mandelstam trans. David McDuff

[notasapleasure]

Much Like Me (Marina Tsvetayeva)

Much like me, you make your way forward, Walking with downturned eyes. Well, I too kept mine lowered. Passer-by, stop here, please. Read, when you've picked your nosegay Of henbane and poppy flowers, That I was once called Marina, And discover how old I was. Don't think that there's any grave here, Or that I'll come and throw you out ... I myself was too much given To laughing when one ought not. The blood hurtled to my complexion, My curls wound in flourishes ... I was, passer-by, I existed! Passer-by, stop here, please. And take, pluck a stem of wildness, The fruit that comes with its fall -- It's true that graveyard strawberries Are the biggest and sweetest of all. All I care is that you don't stand there, Dolefully hanging your head. Easily about me remember, Easily about me forget. How rays of pure light suffuse you! A golden dust wraps you round ... And don't let it confuse you, My voice from under the ground.                                                                    

  -  Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (translated by David McDuff)

[kitchen-light]

And I will tell of the first beauty I saw in captivity A frost-covered window! No peepholes, nor walls, Nor cell bars, nor the long-endured pain--- Only a blue radiance on a tiny pane of glass, A lacy pattern - none more beautiful could be dreamt.

Irina Ratushinskaya, “I will live and survive and be asked:” (translated by David McDuff)

[mournfulroses]

I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, tr. by David McDuff, from “The Brothers Karamazov,”

[majestativa]

The sea knows: if it wanted to it could drown the world.

— ELMER DIKTONIUS ⚜️ Ice Around Our Lips: Finland-Swedish Poetry, transl. by David McDuff, (1989)

[majestativa]

Everything is the suprasensuality of the cross and the […] torrent of the eternally coursing blood.

— GUNNAR BJÖRLING ⚜️ Ice Around Our Lips: Finland-Swedish Poetry, transl. by David McDuff, (1989)