Nikolai Gumilev: Giraffe

Today I can see that your look is especially sad
And your arms are especially fragile, as if made of chaff.
Listen, my dear: far away, by the shores of Lake Chad,
Roams the exquisite giraffe.

It was granted the gift of proportion, voluptuous grace,
And its skin is adorned with a pattern remarkably fine:
Only the moon, smashed to pieces, descended from space
To rock in lake water, could dare try to match its design.

From afar it resembles a caravel’s colorful sail,
And its gait is as smooth as the frigatebird’s radiant flight.
I know the world sees many wonders in all their detail
When it takes to a grotto of marble for refuge at night.

I know all those stories of maidens who’ve never been kissed
And of passionate princes who rule a mysterious plain,
But you have inhaled for too long the lugubrious mist,
You no longer desire to believe anything but the rain.

And how can I tell you of faraway creatures that pad

Among tropical palms, among flowers too fragrant by half…
You’re crying? But listen: far off, by the shores of Lake Chad,
Roams the exquisite giraffe.

Dated 1908. Impossible to bring fully into English, but this version by Stephen Dodson comes closer than others. Gumilev was a legendarily exotic figure who reshaped Russian poetry in the early years of the twentieth century, married Anna Akhmatova, and was shot by the Bolsheviks for complicity in a royalist conspiracy. He travelled in Africa: this record of his travels fascinates because of its intertwined foreground/background with the ambiguous love affair in the poem's present.