Olga Sedakova

Olga Sedakova Poems

Olga Sedakova Biography

Olga Sedakova was born on December 26, 1949 in Moscow. Sedakova was educated at Moscow University, where she also completed a postgraduate dissertation on death rites amongst the Eastern Slavs. Today she is a lecturer at the Gorky Institute of Literature. Sedakova's first collection of verse, Vrata, okna, arki, was published in Paris in 1987. Her work has been acclaimed at home and abroad, but like other poets belonging to the Samizdat movement she has only recently begun to be published freely in Russia. Sedakova is the author of academic articles and essays as well as poetry; she has translated into Russian many major Westem poets, f. e. Horace, Verlaine, Rilke, and Claudel.)

The Best Poem Of Olga Sedakova

Chinese Journey 2

The pond says:
if only I had hands and a voice,
how I would love, how cherish you!
People, you know, are greedy and always ailing
and tearing others' clothes
to make bandages for themselves.
Me, I need nothing:
for tenderness - this is recuperation.
I would place my hands on your knees,
like a tiny household pet,
and, becoming a voice, I would descend from above,
like the sky.

Translated by Jena Woodhouse

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