Since 2022 or thereabouts, I have found it especially difficult to keep up with the crises breaking out across the world. In part, I imagine, that has to do with the birth of my children, who are remarkably adept at generating small crises themselves. It also has to do, I’m sure, with the means by which information and its ugly opposite reach us these days—with little responsible sorting but with much irresponsible manipulation. And, of course, there is little doubt that the globe is in a particularly bad way at the moment.
Living in Tulsa, I try to attend with special care to news from the cities closest to my heart, Odesa and Los Angeles. Russia’s war on Ukraine, now its fifth year, still occasionally filters up into the headlines. Smaller disasters in Los Angeles do as well. Recently, an industrial fire at a cold storage warehouse in Boyle Heights spread toxic fumes through the city’s Eastside. A month later, the terrible consequences are still unfolding.
All very grim, of course. But LA has seen worse. The incident brought to mind an uplifting little poem by a fellow émigré, Viktor Rayzman. Like me, Rayzman was born in Odesa, but decades earlier—in 1934. He spent much of his career in Leningrad, where he became a highly accomplished metallurgical engineer. Bringing his family to the US in 1991, the same year my own family arrived, he eventually settled in LA, where he returned to poetry. This lovely lyric, which I have shortened slightly in my translation, takes place on the Number 4 bus, which I have taken countless times up and down Santa Monica Boulevard. Though we have never met, there’s no doubt in my mind that, at some point, Rayzman and I rode the route together.
A Rainy Day in LA
Riding the Number 4 through heavy rain
down Santa Monica, I craved a sunny break,
my big umbrella dripping at my knee,
the water pooling in a little lake.
At the next stop, a young girl fluttered in,
pulling the wet hood from her radiant hair.
The driver glumly waited for the green,
shutting the doors against the cold damp air.
She paid the fare, but didn’t move away,
nervously rifling through her little purse.
Her lipstick fell; she caught it on the fly.
The light would turn in seconds, now—but first,
“Open the door!” a woman’s voice rang out.
He did so. With a cellphone in her hand,
a lady stepped aboard and said, “Sweetheart,
I think you dropped this”—then was gone again.
Be it a heat wave or a downpour, come what may
Los Angeles has not yet lost its way.
March 25, 2012Дождь в Лос Анджелесе
В автобусе четвёртого маршрута
Катил я в дождь, ловя просвета миг.
Подобьем запасного парашюта
Приткнулся зонтик у колен моих.
На остановке девушка впорхнула,
Стянув с волос намокший капюшон.
Водитель ждал зелёный свет понуро,
Но двери от дождя захлопнул он.
Она монетки затолкала в кассу
И стала чем-то в сумочке шуршать,
Как будто маслом заправляла кашу.
А с неба за ушатом лил ушат.
Порой помада падала из сумки,
Она её ловила в тот же миг.
А красный свет горел, и шли секунды.
—Откройте дверь!—снаружи женский крик.
Вбежала молодая, но не слишком,
С мобильником в протянутой руке.
—Ты обронила телефон, малышка!,
А это на английском языке:
“Ю драпт юр фон”. И, к девушке приблизясь,
Находку отдала. И снова - в дождь...
Лос Анджелес, пусть ливень, пекло, кризис,—
Ты верною дорогою идёшь!
25 марта 2012
Love this poem!! More LA poems please
Lovely, thanks!