Poetry - У природы нет плохой погоды (Nature has no bad weather)

13.02.10

The other day, when rummaging through my stuff in search of a book, I came across a bunch of typewritten poems that I composed in an attempt to hone and show off my English writing skills some 20+ years ago when I read English at the Moscow State Linguistic University. I was surprised to find that they weren’t half-bad. So I decided to digitize them for posterity by posting them on my blog—otherwise Google might miss them in their global book-digitization effort. If nothing else, they are sure to provide comic relief from my more serious endeavours such as the Idiom-a-Day project.

They’ll be coming one a day in no particular order, always providing I have time to spare from my translation work. I don’t intend to edit the poems but I might make a minor correction here or there. If I do, I’ll indicate it in the date of the poem.

Here’s the first one. The idea was suggested by a line in a song from Ryazanov’s film, “У природы нет плохой погоды“ (Nature has no bad weather). The film is question is “Служебный роман” (Office Romance), 1977.

If with your wife you’re out of temper

And Nature’s, too, has kicked up a tempest,

Don’t say you’re glad

The weather’s also bad

For weather can be neither good nor bad;

It’s just your being mad

That makes it sad.

Nature holds the weather as a mirror,

With your emotions keeping pace,

So whenever you look nearer,

What you see is your own face.

Alexander V Demidov

9 December 1988