Then someone shouts, “Come on, get it together!
Remember everything you used to tell us!
Get up or people will hear about this,
everywhere, before you know it.
“Get up and fight, as only you can!
Knock down that scum! Don’t let him walk out of here!
Each victory
brings you closer to the goal!
“No forgiveness for those who hide, not in the river or in the grass!
No grace from the Lord, no rights!
Come on, you’ve fallen so many times,
fallen and died!
“They’re all traitors and losers!
They don’t have a conscience, only gills,
fins, instead of wings on their backs!
Knock them down, Savior,
bloody your fists on them!
“Knock them down for their weakness and tears!
Knock them down for forgetting everything each night!
For watching their own deaths
like spectators!
“Anyway, they don’t listen to you or to us,
nothing will save them, they don’t give a shit about anything,
destroy them, O Lord, before they
destroy themselves.
“Destroy them for their corruption and laziness,
their treachery in every generation,
their cunning, which they weave
into their prayers!”
…and he gets up, spitting black blood,
rises, and falls, then rises again,
and the dockworkers whisper, so again,
by death he’s conquered death.
He hits ’em right in the solar plexus
for each sin!
Boxing is really for the stubborn
and the young.
The young dockworker, parting from life,
manages to thank him, happy as a baby,
as if saying, Blessed is he who believes
in salvation and oblivion.
The apostles wipe his face with a towel
and tell him they always believed in him.
And the one who placed his bets on him,
continues to back him,
now
a tested fighter.
□ □ □
Uncle Sasha worked in a bar in Frunze[1]
and was wise in the ways of the world, may he rest in peace.
He liked to say, “For a real sailor the honor of the fleet
is more important than the reputation of a ship.
“So no matter what port, or where you drop anchor,
keep your heart open to all winds.
Even if you are throwing up overboard in the morning,
make sure to hold on to what you want.
“Even when you are strung up from the yardarm,
or when you are dragged on the bottom of the ocean,
always remember that somewhere there’s a door,
where someone is waiting for you with wine and hope!”
We are not given that much advice.
And what we do get is not what we need in life.
So I was always ready without a doubt
to see the truth in Uncle Sasha’s rants and confessions.
All his wild stories, tales, and drunken yarns,
all his dark curses and pitch-black tirades
had a point: you cannot abandon your friends in a fight,
nor can you forgive anyone who hits you.
I remember everyone who once sat beside us,
who were then led out by surly cops
into the melting snows of March or the freezing air of November,
deprived of the joy and sense of justice around every table.
Some of the workers and professors with dark faces
who listened to his stories about the Black Sea Fleet,
now eat from dumpsters;
others have died of hunger or TB;
some left those dissipating places
to defend a lost Jerusalem.
But I don’t remember a single one
who was not ready to die with him.
“Hey Uncle Sasha,” one of them would shout,
“We dwell in the bounty of the Lord.
This country does not deserve to have its own fleet.
This town, with its rivers and golden sand,
will drink to us with bad brandy when we die.
Our light will be reflected in the distant stars,
black roses will turn to cinders in the hands of girls.
Every heart burns only once.
Death arrives after
life ends.”
Then they would step around the corner
and fall into the gutter.
Maybe I alone kept
what they left behind.
Silver sewn into belts.
Animals, children, women.
Trees growing in summer sands.
Springs gushing on the bottom of the river.
□ □ □
The team was disbanded before the season started—
the owner cashed in his shares and bought a hotel in Egypt.
Black crows strolled, guarding the lawn.
In the locker room the deflated soccer balls smelled of defeat.
Sania, our right wing, the hope of the team,
cried as he carried his things out of the clubhouse.
He held on to his shoes, as if he had nothing else,
his hands folded like a Sunni saying his prayers.
Well, I didn’t believe him, he was doing it on purpose,
behaving like he was the only one who cared.
Sania’s brother, a rightist, was sitting in jail, dreaming of burning down this town
for electing such an idiot as mayor.
His father also had done time and was right-wing too.
I don’t know how he dealt with them.
The only good things in his life were his injuries,
old sports club patches, and his long black hair.
So I say to him, “Enough, Sania, enough whining,
enough lamenting losses.
Why are we standing here like a couple of Sunnis,
come on Sania, let’s settle our nerves.
“We’ll go to the factory and find some work,
we’ll apply to college or sign up to be security guards.
When you have a choice, always choose freedom,
When you’re one man down, you’ve got to lock down the defense.”
And he answers, “Work, what work?
Guard? What are you talking about?
All my life all I ever saw was the opponent’s goalpost.
The only person who ever respected me was their guard.
“All I had was a number on my back,
a place in the lineup, and I gave everything for it.
What can I do now in this country?
How can I tell who’s on my team and who’s not?
“Why stay, who should I fight?
What the fuck, I’ll go to Russia.
I’ll play where they assign me, I’ll take my chances,
leave this mess, and wait for amnesia.”