Three new Kharms translations
by Steven Fowler
[ poetry - august 10 ]
Blue notebook No 10
(or 'The Red Haired Man’)
There was a red haired man who had no eyes or ears.
Neither did he have any hair, so he was called red-haired theoretically.
He couldn’t speak, since he didn’t have a mouth. Neither did he have a nose.
He didn’t even have any arms or legs. He had no stomach and he had no back and he had no spine and he had no innards whatsoever. He had nothing at all!
Therefore there’s no knowing whom we are even talking about.
In fact it’s better that we don’t say any more about him.
(1937)
The plummeting old women
A certain old woman, out of excessive curiosity
fell out of a window, plummeted to the ground,
and was smashed to pieces.
Another old woman leaned out of the window
and began looking at the remains of the first one,
but she also, out of excessive curiosity, fell out of the window,
plummeted to the ground and was smashed to pieces.
Then a third old woman plummeted from the window,
then a fourth, then a fifth.
By the time a sixth old woman had plummeted down,
I was fed up watching them,
and went to Mal'tseviskiy Market
where, it was said,
a knitted shawl had been given to a blind man.
An encounter
On one occasion a man went off to work and on the way he met another man who,
having bought a loaf of Polish bread, was wending his way home.
And that’s all there is to it.
