A Diptych of Snowdrops

16 January 2021

Snowdrop

When you say, 'The earth is warming up
and you will get warm too', a snowdrop
peeks out from under the snow. She climbs up
from a gorge filled with melodies and dreams.

After a beam from the sun, she smiles

in her dress of white snow. Her chest

smells of spring. Her body, open, excited,

searching for a dream, is visible to poets

far and wide. She looks just like a girl

in a white dress rushing to spring after winter.

~ Tumanbay Moldagaliyev (1935-2011), translated by Patricia McCarthy

 

26 January 2021

The Snowdrop

 

Silver spurs, clinking and ringing,

icicles break the silence

Their mouths amazed, blinds pushed back,

windows gaze hard, listening out for the spring.

But up above there is a cheerful white line

and the prattle of noisy rooks,

while the Sun rebelled and bursts out laughing,

as though someone had plucked his rays like strings.

Spring suns itself, turned to the full blaze of the Sun.

Winds stir up April all along the steppe.

Here, the slender snowdrop suffering from the cold,

shamelessly gets tipsy with every chattering drop.

It will take some work from the Sun

before the snowdrop manages to warm himself

in the midday smoke.

But he believes in spring with a pure heart--

and I envy him a little.

~ Vladimir Gundarev (1944-2012), translated by Belinda Cooke

Both poems are from the anthology, Contemporary Kazakh Literature: Poetry (National Bureau of Translations, 2019)