The following is new poetry by Natalia Sannikova, translated by Matvei Yankelevich. It appears in PEN America 13: Lovers.

Free Verses to My Son

When you’ve read as many books, poems, and blogs
as I’ve already read,
you’ll find out just how little I get literature.
For example, Blok—he wrote about Woman and the Revolution,
a worthy endeavor for a poet.
Yesenin drank, loved, made trouble, and died young—
that too, all things considered, is typical.
Brodsky was in exile and in Venice, ended up on the Nobel list—
nothing odd about that fate, especially in our times.
Poets in my circle, who your children will study in Russian Lit.,
every day write wonderful things in online journals—
essays, poems, fresh thoughts on politics and literature.
Outside the windows it’s winter again, I think about you, and I think
how summer will come, for the first time without happiness in it for me.
Please don’t read anything at all, save for books on programming.
I don’t want you to figure it all out about me—
about just how little I get life.
And love—but that you definitely won’t figure out.
 

Copyright © 2010 by Natalia Sannikova. All rights reserved.