a gypsy camp by the roadside, surly children in headscarves
home for former revolutionaries, two old ladies on a bench
(one is mine)
crimea, nineteen thirty eight, cascades of bathing beauties
(which one’s you)
croquet on the dacha lawn, moscow region
twenty years later in forty three
siberia, in evacuation
a headless cockerel and it swooped dead through the yard
head lying in the grass
and all the radio stations of the soviet union are speaking
accountant overwhelmed by numbers
nurse (made it to berlin)
seventeen-year-old nanny
shoeshiner from the next stairwell
geologist recently released from his second sentence
gynaecologist
lecturer at the institute of architecture
vasya (who?) from solyanka street
woman from local health inspectorate
twenty-year-old lyodik killed in action
his father, a volunteer, bombed troop train
his mother who lived right up until death
a little girl who will remember all this
relatives from saratov and leningrad
inhabitants of khabarovsk and gorky
and those I have forgotten
and pushkin pushkin of course
everyone round a laden table
ninth of may victory celebration
windows thrown back radio on
victoria herself sitting at the table
singing the blue scarf song singing schubert
as if there were no death
*
so what bounds Russia, said the crippled man
you know very well what bounds it, said the crippled man
and every span of her earth
and every step in her dust
is a step towards border control
across no man’s land
and the sky drawn up close
all the better to gape
oh this place, place, where boundaries are everywhere
everywhere junctions connections between this world and that
every passing on walkways and subways
and the border guard peering into the still-open mouth
holes and dugouts and pores
through the skin of the country, these doors
through which passers-by
may not descend unauthorised
not a tear duct, nor a shallow well
but a mine in every hole
a deep long shaft
to where the canary me is held aloft
*
I teach straying from I, yet who can stray from me!
this I follows you from here until the hour of death
throbs in your ears till you say ‘here I stands’
I do not say these things for a rouble or to fill up the time while
I wait for a boat
(it is you talking, not I – I is your native tongue
tied in your mouth, in mine it began to wag)
while we sleep, I thinks about you
*
suburbangascompressionworks where the unstable sublimated mass
rises paraglides over paradise or over gas
the compressed is overgrown, but peonies grow abundant as the plucked
*
it is time to explain myself – let us stand up
earth cannot stand
she has no close or distant plans
no sense of her own rightness
she doesn’t pity herself doesn’t answer in answer to
doesn’t lie down doesn’t run
makes no particular mistakes
leaves no person without
earth opens her mouth but not to speak
nor does she stop herself being mired in herself
*
the intricate carved doors of the butterfly
don’t flap forwards backwards so you
can pull your heart from its cavity
and peer on tiptoes over the garden wall
the suite of rooms won’t sway or come apart,
nor will the mezzanine bend and snap
at last vision runs from the garden
says to reason: enough of your crap
and now in the whitest nights –
when light hardly catches its own –
our trial opens in court and takes flight
and marrow courses and teems in the bone
the prosecutor mops his damp brow
pours a thick glass with a hand that shakes
so water scatters in beads on the cloth
a tiny map of the italian lakes
bone marrow, like porridge left overnight,
suddenly singing in full throat
a song of an old life, our old life,
but no more now than a flat joke
as if we weren’t sawdust-stuffed, soap slivers,
splinters of worlds thrown into a pail
and the thick-lipped beer bottles
trumpeted our way
*
transparent pine legs flicker past
like a shadowy borodino battle
moscow like a played draught
slips out of reach its draw is lateral
there: inseparable, clustered like grapes,
foaming goblets of lilac in the dark
caught in the thin smoke from war medals
mid-bloom, outwinging firework
not holy mother of god! not a dungeon!
but darkling glass in the entrance halls
v-sign smeared on the walls.
but I awoke and went awol!
I saw the skull beneath the skin
its sockets its machined teeth its seam
not a bonnet but a bauble
the night sickblossom of a bluebottle crown
trotting like guinea hens, zulfiya
zemfira, maria and russIa
run like ink across the meadow
into the open maw of a severed head
roost on the perch in the mouth’s red hollow
but I awoke before we were swallowed
*
the watery world is boiling and burning
its motors begin dully moving and turning
and dust in damp little scrupuli
coats the horse’s muzzle and eye
who rides so late through standing water
it is the father, he holds his daughter
the cart rattles and clatters and shakes
but the child never wakes
hush now child don’t be frightened
the sedge has withered from the lake
the heron calls, the stork has quietened
we’ll get there in the time it takes
languor on the bosom, warm in the womb
trembling like water in a manger
tell the child that the dawn has come
now the child’s beyond danger
but deep in the rock where the sediment’s hard
the underground water is born in the dark
and rises up the dungeon stairs
slowly up the legs of chairs
*
summarised
what was said
amounted to
she simply isn’t able to speak for herself
so she is always ruled by others
because her history repeats and repeats itself
takes on ersatz and out of date forms
and there is no knowing where her quotes are from
nineteen thirty or nineteen seventy
they’re all in there pell-mell all at once
not to remind us, you understand, just to plug the holes
(appalling really)
her raw material
her diamonds her dust tracks her dirt-coloured trailers
ancient forests mountain ranges
snow leopards desert roses gas flow
needed for global trade arrangements
her raw material doesn’t want to do business with her
gives itself up without love will do as she wants
unclear what she needs
where’s your I, where is it hidden?
why do strangers speak for you
or are you speaking
in the voices of scolds and cowards
get out of yourself
put that dictionary back on the shelf
she won’t come out
it won’t come right
look how ferry fleet she is
see her wings in aeroplansion
woolscouring steelbeating pasteurising
thousand-eyed thousand-bricked civic expansion
weavers singing at their non-functioning looms
voluntary wine-drinking zones
supre (forgive my french) matists striding forth
junckerlords kalashnikovs
bolshoiballet dancing out from behind the fire curtain
the fenced-in ghost of a murdered orchard
this[fucking]country
paradise sleeping in hell’s embrace
*
let her stay like that, in bloom
I’ll take my stand here
with the brief falling petals