Vladislav Khodasevich's "Selected Poems"
Also reading: Khodasevich (a real live book!). Bilingual edition. Translated from the Russian by Peter Daniels. (Maybe I'll put up Daniels' version of "The Monkey" alongside Nabokov's someday. Maybe I'll have some time -- far down the road -- to dabble in the Russian myself.) Will certainly look more at Nabokov's Pale Fire in relation to Khodasevich's "Ballada." * Khodasevich's "Petersburg": They gave themselves to sad monotonous tasks, until their strength was spent. Half-dead among them, only I distracted their predicament. They looked at me and they forgot their bubbling kettles boiling dry, the boots of felt that scorched on stoves -- all listening to my poetry Then in sepulchral Russian dark a flowery herald-girl took my hand; and music's concord was revealed to me, knocked sideways in the wind. Mad with visions, over the sheet-ice on the canal, I'd reach the bank and slither up the crumbli