23.
There is no consolation, none.
Translated by Andrew Reynolds
The Pilot
And when he came back from wherever there is,
He groaned in his sleep and rained bombs on the cities
And ghosts appeared to him.
He’d get up in the middle of the night for a smoke,
Our communal rags piled about, and awoke,
I’d start packing bags in the dim,
But that was OK by and large.
He wouldn’t go tilling our vegetable patch,
Our family’s living and income to match,
And he wouldn’t allow me to go.
Wouldn’t let me touch the confounded greens.
He ate and grew cross, and grew mean, and grew lean
And rolled his own cigs nice and slow.
But life continued itself.
But when he came back from wherever there is,
Where civil airliners go up on the breeze
Up over the rainbow there,
So when he came back from up there for good,
We had no clue, we felt totally screwed,
Helpless like sucklings and scared.
But that was OK by and large.
There up in the skies, pilots sing at the yoke,
And stewardesses fly serving drinks to the folk,
Rolling carts down the aisle cheerfully.
And he wasn’t a lodger up there, not my man,
But the Father has lent him his firm helping hand,
And no one will take that from me.
And life continued itself.
So when he came back here forever to stay,
An empty descendant from the freedomless sky,
Mysterious like a suitcase,
We went out by the staff door, the night chill and clear,
The boy in my arms and the girl hanging near,
And he gave me a whack on the face.
But that was OK by and large.
Like the flowing blush when we hear the word “love,”
All over my face his sky-blue glance roved,
While he hurt me, time and again.
And we plopped on the lawn, all the pedigree, staring
At the horizon where the sky was flaring
And no one put out the flame.
And life continued itself.
He drank for a week, hard and deep, with a tear.
He cussed at whoever, with a snarl, with a jeer,
He grabbed at his throat and stuttered.
And then he grew quiet and said, in the sky,
He said, and he didn’t look me in the eye—
There lived The Heavenly Daughter.
She’s a daughter, a grandma, he said, and a wife,
And what she was like with her clothes off,
And I could’ve forgiven him lies,
But he was so convincing describing the ways
Of her gaze as indifferent as heavens themselves,
Of her careless and colorless eyes.
He saw her, he said, for the very first time
When the white little town all burst into flame,
But our mission was almost complete,
And in her blue skirt and white headscarf, she swooped
Headlong in a dive, in a hell of a loop,
To open my parachute.
He added, the dawn is the best time to see her,
She’s dressed every time as a Young Pioneer,*
A raven-blue band in her locks.
—And he snored away, and the house awoke,
Deserted now on, ’cause we drank like we’re broke,
Could as well throw away all the locks.
And me, I got nothing at all, not a stitch,
But this bitch of his, this celestial bitch,
His airborne Commissar,
She’ll answer, she’ll answer for his every turn
She’ll remember his crew doomed to crash and burn
And whatever her orders were.
—
* A member of a mass youth organization in the Soviet Union.
Then everything changed. And life lived on,
It felt clear as glass and pure as dawn,
As if there were no cares.
And my man went to work at the transit lines
And became an enforcer of ticketless fines
For the fair collection of fares!
But one day he came home a stranger again,
With a strain in his voice, that familiar strain,
And staring me close in the face,
He said worldly affairs had wearied him,
And The Heavenly Daughter appeared to him
Near the boulevards, on the bus.
He lay down on the bed and he set about dying,
He kept picking from bedsheets invisible down
And passed away, while, insane,
I sobbed as I ran to buy corvalol drops,
And a bus on the boulevard came to the stop,
And She looked through the windowpane.
She was wearing her Young Pioneer uniform,
She leaned to the side of the window and squirmed,
And a blush blew about her face,
And she made a terrible din in my head,
I stepped on the footboard towards where she stood,
And the court is deciding my case.
… I ask for forgiveness, even though, all told,
It’s my fault, the death of this twelve-year-old,
This girl who has met her doom,
’Cause in that drab abyss, like a fish in a tin,
The Heavenly Daughter still lives in sin,
And no one will know with whom.
… And life continues itself.
Translated by Dmitry Manin
from Happiness
The morning sun arises in the morning—
So many seductive probabilities!
Why then do you, girly, walk through the house,
Clattering your slippers, printing with your heels?
Whatcha want, my dovey little swan?
Turn back around, take off the last rag,
Feast your eyes on the golden mirror,
Moving this and that part forward.
And hey! I hear a muffled beating.
Your sides feel warm and neck’s stretched longer.
The legs don’t please you, but your white feathers
Are the envy of many girlfriends.
You only need to make a move with a wing
For an oof in the belly; the hardwood floor
Looms far below; my dear ones, farewell,
Write to me poste restante.
—Immortal, forever immortal am I,
The Styx itself will not arrest my flight!
Translated by Sibelan Forrester
As Danaë, prone in the incarce-chamber,
Hears the sounds of rain, barking, a ring and clink,
Sweetly squeezing her eyes shut (in vain: you can’t sleep
Through a visit by gold),
In the warm night, hear ye: suddenly and in the west
The gate hinges groan, snow blows into your mouth,
And weightily over the ice, as if on sand, villagers
Step with their wagons.
Silence? Silence. Nobody’s there, nobody.
The person-exemplar lies to sleep, as they lie,
Cumulonimbus migratory, feathery friable,
Banning evolution.
A female I-person would also sleep, but no.
There pining for us, who heal over in an hour
With grey hair, with scales, chicken feathers,
He is, and swallows tears.
Translated by Sibelan Forrester
It is certainly time to stop
The transversion of all these forms,
Fish turned fishwife, maiden turned maple,
Snow turned napkin, and all that jazz.
How to stop it? Well, for a start,
Set yourself the limit of self:
Squeeze the rhymes dry, cancel the metaphors,