The Quartz Pebble
Vasko Popa
Original Language: Serbian
Translated from Serbian by Anne Pennington
for Dušan Radić
Headless limbless
It appears
With the excitable pulse of chance
It moves
With the shameless march of time
It holds all
In its passionate
Internal embrace
A smooth white innocent torso
It smiles with the eyebrow of the moon
1. The Heart of the Quartz Pebble
They played with the pebble
The stone like any other stone
Played with them as if it had no heart
They got angry with the pebble
Smashed it in the grass
Puzzled they saw its heart
They opened the pebble’s heart
In the heart a snake
A sleeping coil without dreams
They roused the snake
The snake shot up into the heights
They ran off far away
They looked from afar
The snake coiled round the horizon
Swallowed it like an egg
They came back to the place of their game
No trace of snake or grass or bits of pebble
Nothing anywhere far around
They looked at each other they smiled
And they winked at each other
2. The Dream of the Quartz Pebble
A hand appeared out of the earth
Flung the pebble into the air
Where is the pebble
It hasn’t come back to earth
It hasn’t climbed up to heaven
What’s become of the pebble
Have the heights devoured it
Has it turned into a bird
Here is the pebble
Stubborn it has stayed in itself
Not in heaven nor in earth
It obeys itself
Amongst the worlds a world
3. The Love of the Quartz Pebble
He fell for a beautiful
A rounded blue-eyed
A frivolous endlessness
He is quite transformed
Into the white of her eye
Only she understands him
Only her embrace has
The shape of his desire
Dumb and boundless
All her shadows
He has captured in himself
He is blind in his love
And he sees
No other beauty
But her whom he loves
And who will cost him his head
4. The Adventures of the Quartz Pebble
He’s had enough of the circle
The perfect circle around him
He’s stopped short
His load is heavy
His own load inside him
He’s dropped it
His stone is hard
The stone he’s made of
He’s left it
He’s cramped in himself
In his own body
He’s come out
He’s hidden from himself
Hidden in his own shadow
5. The Secret of the Quartz Pebble
He’s filled himself with himself
Has he eaten too much of his own tough flesh
Does he feel ill
Ask him don’t be afraid
He’s not begging for bread
He’s petrified in a blissful convulsion
Is he pregnant perhaps
Will he give birth to a stone
Or a wild beast or a streak of lightning
Ask him as much as you like
Don’t expect an answer
Expect only a bump
Or a second nose or a third eye
Or who knows what
6. Two Quartz Pebbles
They look at each other dully
Two pebbles look at each other
Two sweets yesterday
On the tongue of eternity
Two stone tears today
On an eyelash of the unknown
Two flies of sand tomorrow
In the ears of deafness
Two merry dimples tomorrow
In the cheeks of day
Two victims of a little joke
A bad joke without a joker
They look at each other dully
With cold cruppers they look at each other
They talk without lips
They talk hot air
This translation was published in Vasko Popa’s Complete Poems 1953-87 (Anvil, 1997, 2011) and is updated from the version published in Modern Poetry in Translation No.1 to reflect the fact that Anne Pennington’s original translations were revised by Francis R. Jones. It is published here by permission of Carcanet Press.
Poet
Vasko Popa
Vasko Popa was a Serbian poet of Romanian descent. He was born near the town of Vršac in the Banat region of Northern Serbia, then a part of Yugoslavia. In the Second World War, Popa joined Tito’s Communist underground, and he was imprisoned in a German concentration camp at Bečkerek (now Zrenjanin, Northern Serbia). After the war he graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at Belgrade University, and published his first major collection, Kora (Bark) in 1953, the first of his eight books. Francis Jones writes that Popa came to the forefront of a new ‘avant-garde’ poetic movement in the early 1950s. This movement formed a powerful challenge to the more representational lyrical style of poetry that then held sway. Though often surreal in quality, Popa’s vision differed from the inter-war surrealist school. In the introduction to Popa’s work in Modern Poetry in Translation No. 1 the editors write, ‘the surrealists’ lack of belief in the efficaciousness of poetry has been left behind. Popa’s work is epic in tendency. A step towards the realisation of grand proportions, without returning to classical concepts, is the cyclic scheme into which he organizes his verse.’ All of Popa’s poems were grouped into cycles, including The Quartz Pebble, One Bone to Another, Games and The Small Box, which are featured in Modern Poetry in Translation No. 1. These poems also highlight Popa’s gift for creating mythologies that are magical and vivid, with imaginative detail both epic and precisely felt. By the time Modern Poetry in Translation No. 1 appeared, Popa had published two collections and edited three anthologies ‘of national poetic lore, of poetic humour and of poetic dream visions’. Later, in his introduction to Vasko Popa: Complete Poems, Ted Hughes wrote that ‘Popa’s imaginative journey resembles a Universe passing through a Universe. It has been one of the most exciting things in modern poetry, to watch this journey being made.’
Translated from Serbian by
Anne Pennington (1934-1981) was a scholar of Russian and Slavonic Studies and a fellow of Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford. Her scholarly interests were wide-ranging, but she had a particular interest in the languages and traditions of South-eastern Europe and she translated folk poetry from those regions as well as a number of contemporary poets, such as Vasko Popa. She often worked in collaboration with English-speaking poets, including Ted Hughes, who held her work in high regard. She had a great friendship with Vasko Popa and their correspondence was published in 2010. When Vasko Popa learnt of Anne Pennington’s death he was about to appear at a poetry reading in Cambridge. He wanted to read a poem dedicated to Anne Pennington, and so Peter Jay, Anthony Rudolf and Daniel Weissbort quickly translated the poem together. The poem opens: ‘Until her last breath she enlarges | her Oxford house | Built in Slavonic | Vowels and consonants’.
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