Christmas Star
by Joseph Brodsky
In a cold time, in a place more accustomed
To scorching heat, to flat plains than to hills,
A child was born in a cave to save the world.
And it stormed, as only winter’s desert can.
Everything seemed huge to him: his mother’s breast
The yellow steam of the camels’ breath, the Magi,
Balthazar, Caspar, Melchior, their gifts, carried here.
He was all of him just a dot. And the dot was a star.
Attentively and fixedly, through the sparse white clouds
Upon the recumbent child, on the manger, from afar,
From the depths of the universe, from its very end,
A star watched over the cave. And that was the father’s gaze.
From Paysage s navodneniem (Landscape with Flood)
Tr. L. Shmailo
Thursday, December 25, 2008
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About Me
- Larissa Shmailo
- Larissa Shmailo's new poetry CD is Exorcism (http://cdbaby.com/cd/shmailo2) and her new book is In Paran (BlazeVOX 2009). She has been published in Barrow Street, Drunken Boat, Fulcrum, Rattapallax, Lungfull!, Big Bridge, About: Poetry, and other publications. She has received “Critic’s Pick” notices for her readings and radio appearances from the New York Times, the Village Voice, and Time Out magazine. She translated the Russian Futurist opera Victory over the Sun by A. Kruchenych, performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, and at theaters and museums internationally. She recently contributed translations to the anthology Contemporary Russian Poetry from Dalkey Archive Press. Her first poetry CD, The No-Net World, has received rave reviews and is frequently heard on radio and Internet broadcasts in the U.S. and the U.K. Visit Larissa at http://www.myspace.com/larissashmailoexorcism http://www.myspace.com/thenonetworld
