The Last Wave of Immigrants, by Sergei Lavrov

Sergei Lavrov

It takes a thick skinned man to serve as Vladimir Putin’s ambassador to the world for a term, let alone for almost two decades, but it seems Moscow’s most senior foreign official, hailed as “the formidable face” of Putin’s foreign policy has a softer side.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who has headed the ministry since 2004 after spending the decade prior as Russia’s ambassador in the UN, has published a series of beat poems in today’s issue of the Russian arts magazine Russkiy Pioner (Russian Pioneer).

(image credit)

ЭМИГРАНТЫ ПОСЛЕДНЕЙ ВОЛНЫ

Нет, ничто в этом мире не ново,
Лишь все слаще Отечества дым.
Эмигранты — не русское слово,
Но каким оно стало родным.
Две могучих волны в полстолетья
Уходили к чужим берегам.
Подгоняла их Родина плетью,
Чтоб чужим не молились богам.
Сколько судеб в своей круговерти
Две волны погубили, спасли.
Но уже поднимается третья
С неуемной российской земли.
Пересохли святые колодцы,
И обходят волхвы стороной,
А Россия — опять ей неймется —
Поднимает волну за волной.
И судьба улыбается ведьмой,
И утраты не чует страна.
Ну а что, если станет последней
Эта страшная третья волна?
Брызги гущи кофейной на блюдце.
Угадай, где мосты сожжены?
Угадай, где мосты, чтоб вернуться
Эмигрантам последней волны?

Январь 1995 года

Reference: Эмигранты — не русское слово.

Google Translate

The Last Wave of Emigrants, by Sergei Lavrov

No, nothing in this world is not new,
Only sweeter Fatherland smoke.
Emigrants - not a Russian word,
But as it was the mother.
Two powerful wave in half a century
Went to foreign shores.
Customized their homeland whip
To a stranger did not pray to the gods.
How many destinies in their whirlwind
Two waves destroyed saved.
But rising third
With boundless Russian land.
Holy wells have dried up,
And bypasses the Magi party
And Russia - again she was itching to do -
Picks up wave after wave.
And the fate of a smiling witch
And does not feel the loss of the country.
Well, what if it becomes final
This terrible third wave?
Spray grounds coffee on a saucer.
Guess where the bridges are burned?
Guess where the bridge to return
The latest wave of immigrants?

January 1995

In Lavrov’s third poem, written in 1995, he narrates the voyage of “the two waves of immigrants in the last century”, where he laments on how the word immigrant “is not Russian but it has become such” and prophecies of a tragic outcome for the “third wave of immigrants” who will have to “guess where the bridge for their return lies”.

Reference: Russian Foreign Minister Publishes New York-Inspired Beat Poetry.

The algorithms for Google Translate have much room for improvement, but which, along with the Newsweek article, give us a sense for the poetry.  I love hearing about poetry coming out from someone, whom we do not expect to have poetry in him.