To My Friends

Yuli Daniel

1969

God’s grace has surely been overabundant.
Riches were mine. Hardly a day would pass
When human sympathy did not alight on me
Like manna from the sky.
I cupped my slender fingers to receive it
Ironically smiling: “God be praised,”
As a whole caravan of guests descended
Bearing its priceless freight of light and warmth.
Now, far from your hands, far from your eyes,
It’s only now I’ve really understood
That it was you who saved me from destruction
In those dark and terrible three years.
No, man does not live by bread alone!
It was your help that made me win the battles.
You poured blood and life back into my veins,
O you who revived me, you who gave me your blood!
It’s finished. I’m in trouble up to my neck.
Anxiety is circling around me.
But is there a soul to sigh and say: “You old troublemaker . . .”
And stroke my forehead with a warming hand?
It’s finished. It’ll be a long time before I’m out.
Even the ray of hope now hardly glimmers.
But in the silences of ravaged days
You’ve been transfigured into sounds and words.
You’ve settled on these prison-written pages.
Traveled uncharted roads of darkness, though drenched in light.
As flesh and blood I had to lose you all
To rediscover you in meter and rhyme.

Translated by David Burg and Arthur Boyars.

Credits

Yuli Daniel, “To My Friends,” from Prison Poems, trans. David Burg and Arthur Boyars (London: Marion Boyars Publishers, Calder and Boyars, 1971), p. 43. Used with permission of the publisher.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 9.

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Creator Bio

Yuli Daniel

1925–1988

The author of strange, satirical stories, Yuli Daniel inspired a generation of young Russian writers to follow his example and poke fun at the Russian government. Writing as “Nikolai Arzhak,” Daniel managed to export his work to the West, where it circulated widely, unhindered by government censorship. Put on trial with his fellow writer Andrey Sinyavsky for publishing “anti-Soviet stories,” he was sentenced to five years’ hard labor in 1966. “To My Friends” belongs to his cycle of poems written in the Gulag. Before his death, Daniel was celebrated as a fearless poet who suffered for his art and politics.

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