A deer, a deer stood in that place
Asking the endless question
And from beyond the seven seas
Carried the wails of a child.
I wandered the yards, I glanced in the windows
I searched for a child I could raise myself
Choose myself a little babby
Maybe a girl or a little laddy
I’d feed my child the purest sugar
Teach it to lace and embroider
Take it for strolls under my pinny
Sing sweet songs to my own little sonny.
But they cast me out, they came at me
With torches and pitchforks they drove me
Your own foolish mothers and fathers!
And you will wander snot-nosed for years
Angering strangers, lost and derided
Without the muzzle-scent of tears
Never knowing your own true tribe.
The last songs are assembling,
Soldiers of a ghostly front:
Escaping from surrounded places
A refrain or two make a break for it
Appearing at the rendez-vous
Looking about them, like the hunted.
How stiffly unbending they are
Running water won’t soften them now!
How unused they are to company
The words don’t form as they ought.
But their elderly, skillful hands
Pass the cartridges round,
And until first light their seeing fingers
Reassemble Kalashnikovs,
They draw, with sharp intake of breath
From wounds, the deeply lodged letters—
And toward morning, avoiding checkpoints,
They enter the sleepless city.
In times of war, they fall silent.
When the muses roar, they fall silent.
from the cycle
UNDERGROUND PATHEPHONE
My dear, my little Liberty,
I wanted you—but why?
A tiny boat runs on the sea,
Alone in it I lie.
A teaspoon sits beside a plate,
But nothing’s left to stir.
I’ve done some being around the place,
I will not anymore.
My soul, unmarred, unmarried,
You are all mist and dew,
Homely and unhurried,
Beautiless and subdued—
Where the azure used to sparkle in
Vermillionish banks,
There muscular and masculine
Clouds close their solid ranks.
Translated by Dmitry Manin
There he lies in his new bed, a band of paper round his head,*
Such a mustachioed gentilhomme, now in the coffin all alone,
So here he lies, all numb and quiet, and the collar of his face
Is growing yellow from inside, but you would best avert your gaze,
For deep within, just like a clock that’s scratching its tick-tock-tick-tock,
He still produces, dull and low, his never-ceased Iloveyouso,
But all the people at his side, they wouldn’t hear him if they tried,
Just us, we look from the plafond, invisible, but not for long,
Each one of us, so well we know:
I too had squadrons to command,
Wore in my mouth Iloveyouso,
Wore round my head a paper band.
Translated by Alexandra Berlina
—
* In Russian Orthodox funeral rites, paper or cloth bands inscribed with a prayer and sacred images are placed on the forehead of the deceased.
Don’t wait for us, my darling
Me and my friend been took.
Reporting back from the front, sir:
There’s war wherever you look.
We’re based down in a basement
In the deepest depths of the clay
They’re throwing flames above us
But we’ve gone away
Some arrived only lately
Some at the beginning of time
All of them flat as playing cards
Fallen in the grime.
And the earth that flows between us
Is thick as wine.
We were men but now
We’re amino acids in soup
The smell of tears and sperm
And bonemeal and gloop
And me I’m singed at the edges
A piece of felted wool
The one who stood at the window with you
Is made of deep hole.
When they lay that table
With plates on damask cloth
When they light the Christmas tree
And sing Ave to the host
When a camel hoof
Breaks the icy crust—
A king’s ransom: gold
Frankincense and myrrh
Won’t light us through the cold
Won’t ward off the hunger
So it was all a lie, my girl.
No need to caress the brambles
Or finger through the copse
I’m the empty corner of old cloth
The earth has lain on top.
Translated by Sasha Dugdale
Don’t strain your sight,
What’s mortal is not inside.
However you knock,
They won’t come to unlock.
However I love
The depth of your tender gaze,
Still sparrows will arrive,
And peck at our remains.
I am earth, march-’n’-marsh, muck-’n’-mold,
Collarbone, flowers in season.
Naught will happen to me, I know,
For a whole ’nother reason.
Translated by Irina Shevelenko
FOUR OPERAS
TRANSLATED BY SIBELAN FORRESTER
1. Carmen
They still allow us to smoke in the office,
They get it: this kind of work, you have to smoke,
They run after one as he’s walking: hey, commander,
The second from the table raises his eyes to the door,
The second one from the trial raises his eyes to a hook,
There the lamp’s swaying back and forth, Svetlana, what’ll I say
When the earth quakes, and the ground opens its mouth,
And the arrested earn their execution?
The third one stands up, decorated, and he has everything,
But they’ve called him, and he goes.
“Look for me at dawn,” he said to his comrades,
As if he and they are he and someone else
Who’s alone, like Job, and waits for him like for a storm.
What’s that blue sign on his arm, sister?
That’s a powerful sign on his arm, girlfriend.
There it sort of says: beloved,
My darling, take care of yourself, don’t be on the take in front of everyone,
Give your parents a call, take time off on Wednesday,
If you don’t take it—try to behave yourself,
And if there’s anything call, if there’s anything call for me.
2. Aida
Beautiful, quiet, or rather: she hardly knows Russian,
I like her surroundings, the gingerbread, sugar and all the halvah,
All and all manner of halvah that’s exuding praise,
When she’s in the corner and weighing out the goods.
Her fingers take tangerines by the sides, the freight
Of greenish, stepped-on, sweetly moaning pears—by the neck,
She loads the dark flesh of eggplant into the white
Flesh of rustling plastic; and the price list is born.
While the persimmon is like a mother to her, and she doesn’t look at it
And feels shame for her public profession.
I ask her a question, and she doesn’t give an answer.
I drop by like a thief, and she won’t restrain the thief.