My Virtual Reading Room

This came up as a result of a comment exchange with methylviolet10b regarding poetry in prose. I had mentioned that Turgenev had quite a few poems in prose--many of them written in his later years and thus many of them quite bleak, but some of them are quite remarkable and not as bleak...I had translated one and thought others might like to see it as well.
**
A Sparrow

I was returning from the hunt, walking through a lane in my garden. My dog was running in front of me.
Suddenly, she slowed down her steps and started creeping along, as if she smelled a bird.

I looked further along the alley and saw a young sparrow, with a yellow ring around the beak and fluff on its head. It has fallen out of the nest (the wind was rocking the birches in the lane) and sat motionless, helplessly spreading his barely-sprouting wings.

( Read more... )
**
And this is the original, in Russian:
**

Bоробей

( Далее: )