{"id":40758,"date":"2012-10-04T14:39:56","date_gmt":"2012-10-04T13:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=40758"},"modified":"2017-01-09T16:28:29","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T16:28:29","slug":"national-poetry-day-solzhenitsyn-zarganar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=40758","title":{"rendered":"National Poetry day | Poems by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Zarganar"},"content":{"rendered":"

In its 40-year history, Index has showcased some of the world’s most remarkable poets, many of whom have faced intimidation for speaking out. To mark National Poetry Day, we republish two poets jailed for exercising their right to free speech\u00a0<\/strong>
\n\"alexander-solzhenitsyn\"<\/p>\n

Alexander Solzhenitsyn<\/h5>\n

This is the first ever publication in English of verse by Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, written while the author was detained in the Gulag. An extract from a longer autobiographical work composed in 1950-53, it was published in the first issue of Index on Censorship magazine<\/a> in March 1972.<\/p>\n

God Keep Me from Going Mad (translated by Michael Scammell)<\/strong><\/p>\n

There never was, nor will be, a world of brightness!
\nA frozen footcloth is the scarf that binds my face.
\nFights over porridge, the ganger’s constant griping
\nAnd day follows day follows day, and no end to this dreary fate.<\/p>\n

My feeble pick strikes sparks from the frozen earth.
\nAnd the sun stares down unblinking from the sky.
\nBut the world is here! And will be! The daily round
\nSuffices. But man is not to be prisoned in the day.
\nTo write! To write now, without delay,
\nNot in heated wrath, but with cool and clear understanding.
\nThe millstones of my thoughts can hardly turn,
\nToo rare the flicker of light in my aching soul.
\nYes, tight is the circle around us tautly drawn,
\nBut my verses will burst their bonds and freely roam
\nAnd I can guard, perhaps, beyond their reach,
\nIn rhythmic harmony this hard-won gift of speech.<\/p>\n

And then they can grope my body in vain \u2014
\n‘Here I am. All yours. Look hard. Not a line. . .
\nOur indestructible memory, by wonder divine,
\nIs beyond the reach of your butcher’s hands!’<\/p>\n

My labour of love! Year after year with me you will grow,
\nYear after year you will tread the prisoner’s path.
\nThe day will come when you warm not me alone,
\nNor me alone embrace with a shiver of wrath.
\nLet the stanzas throb \u2014 but no whisper let slip,
\nLet them hammer away \u2014 not a twitch of the lip,
\nLet your eyes not gleam in another’s presence
\nAnd let no-one see, let no-one see
\nYou put pencil to paper.
\nFrom every corner I am stalked by prison \u2014
\nGod keep me from going mad!<\/em><\/p>\n

I do not write my verses for idle pleasure,
\nNor from a sense of energy to burn.
\nNor out of mischief, to evade their searches,
\nDo I carry them past my captors in my brain.
\nThe free flow of my verse is dearly bought,
\nI have paid a cruel price for my poet’s rights:
\nThe barren sacrifice of all her youth
\nAnd ten cold solitary years for my wife \u2014<\/p>\n

The unuttered cries of children still unborn,
\nMy mother’s death, toiling in gaunt starvation,
\nThe madness of prison cells, midnight interrogations,
\nAutumn’s sticky red clay in an opencast mine,
\nThe secret, slow and silent erosive force
\nOf winters laying bricks, of summers feeding the furnace \u2014
\nOh, if this were but the sum of the price paid for my verse!
\nBut those others paid the price with their lives,
\nImmured in the silence of Solovki, drowned in thunder of waves,
\nOr shot without trial in Vorkuta’s polar night.<\/p>\n

Love and warmth and their executed cries
\nHave combined in my breast to carve
\nThe receptive metre of this sorrowful tale,
\nThese few poor thousand incapacious lines.
\nOh, hopeless labour! Can you really pay the price?
\nDo you think to redeem the pledge with a single life?
\nFor what an age has my country been so poor
\nIn women’s happy laughter, so very rich
\nIn poets’ lamentations!
\nVerse verse \u2014 for all that we have lost,
\nA drop of scented resin in the razed forest!
\nBut this is all I live for! On its wings
\nI transport my feeble body through prison walls
\nAnd one day, in distant exile dim,
\nBiding my time, I will free my tortured memory from its thrall:
\nOn paper, birchbark, in a blackened bottle rolled,
\nI will consign my tale to the forest leaves,
\nOr to a drift of shifting snow.<\/p>\n

But what if beforehand they give me poisoned bread?
\nOr if darkness beclouds my mind at last?
\nOh, let me die there<\/em>! Let it not be here!
\nGod keep me from going mad!<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Zarganar<\/h5>\n

\"\"Burmese comic, dissident and poet Zarganar was imprisoned for speaking out against the military junta in its handling of the Cyclone Nargis crisis in May 2008. Last year he, along with dozens of other political prisoners, was released Myitkyina jail in northern Burma\u00a0by the Burmese government.<\/p>\n

The following poem appeared as part of a profile of Zarganar in Beyond Bars, a 2010 issue of Index on Censorship magazine.<\/p>\n

Untitled (translated by Vicky Bowman)<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s lucky my forehead is flat
\nSince my arm must often rest there.
\nBeneath it shines a light I must invite
\nFrom a moon I cannot see
\nIn Myitkyina.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To mark our 40th birthday, on 19 November we are partnering with Poet in the City for a special celebration of Index’s remarkable literary heritage. More here<\/a><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In its 40-year history, Index<\/strong> has showcased some of the world’s most remarkable poets. To mark National Poetry Day, we republish two poets jailed after speaking out<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[581,21],"tags":[4500,571,4860,5020,1865,2206],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40758"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40758"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40762,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40758\/revisions\/40762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}