Contents
My life is curiouser and curiouser,
English Lesson
They were singing 'Yesterday', singing it on the long waves,
Pan is led by passion, more frightening
I write poems, what's more in Russian
Height is gained immediately.
Eight lines in small script
The snow sparkled in the black years,
The whip and the honeycake. The whip
You got hooked
Let's fill in the form: date of birth –
It's easy to go away. But to stay
The autumn rains rustle,
Heavy days that can't be raised.
The heavens are playing with the earth,
Almighty, do not have mercy on me,
* * *
Curiouser and curiouser
- Alice in Wonderland
My life is curiouser and curiouser,
even curiouser than before,
more odd, more wonderful,
my longing for it is even sharper,
miraculous, wonderful. What lies ahead?
Silence, the wall...
Look, the lamp is lit
by another's window, where a stranger's life
continues, partying with the old
and greeting the new moment.
Try not to scream out
or exclaim: 'Stop, moment,
stop' but can one stop
the breath of the wind?
Dry lips whisper: 'Give me a drink'
or perhaps: 'Give me a life'. They give us a drink
but my thirst is not really quenched.
The race of nights and days goes on,
whose secret sense is darker still
and the visible is alien and strange.
Any of us is mortally wounded
and tortured by endless thirst,
and the living, living rain water
pours down from the heavy leaden skies.
1996
In RussianRead by the Author
ENGLISH LESSON
The future is more and more incredible,
there's almost nothing left of it,
and the past is more and more incomprehensible,
(once I lived, or rather tried to live),
we drag it after us constantly
and more often repeat 'I was' rather than 'I will'...
Isn't it better to speak about the present:
how I take the plates from the table,
I go, stroll, sleep, work in the field...
'In the cornfield?' No, in the field of education.
Here is the English verb in the infinitive –
it is bored and thirsts for transformation.
To stand: the verb can't stand,
there is a green longing to stand still,
it wants to change and stream.
It'll fly – you just have to blow on it.
Here are the wings – shall and will, look
they have caught on and carry far away.
Fly, winged ones, fly.
I look after them fastening my gaze
on these distances, on that inconceivable future,
which we desperately lack.
I teach the word that is flying,
and the tenses, that eternally confuse past and future.
1999
In RussianRead by the Author
* * *
Oh, I believe in yesterday.
- Beatles
They were singing 'Yesterday', singing it on the long waves,
singing 'Yesterday' ravishingly,
and those beams flared that had long ago burned down.
They were singing that wonderful song about those times,
half-ghostly, it was heavenly there,
where the beams flare and never burn out.
Let our memory preserve that likeness of paradise
from which we can't ever be thrown out.
1999
In RussianRead by the Author
* * *
Pan is led by passion, more frightening
than wrath, to a young maiden.
He ran after her, but the girl
turned into a reed.
He made a reed-pipe for himself,
his sobbing is like a dog's bark.
Be grateful to fate
for this possession.
You can squeeze in your palms
the body of the reed-pipe.
You breathed out and it sang out.
Is this not grace incarnate?
You breathed out – it sings
as you wander day and night
over the hills and the valley
in a beast-like longing.
1977
In RussianRead by the Author
* * *
The light cross of lonely strolls
- O. Mandelstam
I write poems, what's more in Russian
and I don't want any other work load,
I don't want any other job.
Honestly I don't want to shoulder
any other enterprise.
The time of the year involves me,
the moment of risk, the hour of the soul...
I sharpen my pencils with them.
Pencils. Not knife or teeth.
The silver trumpets sing
in the frail neighbouring forest
where I will carry my usual cross
of lyric-making strolls.
And every nook of my soul
is full of torment and yearning
for feminine and masculine rhymes.
1993
In RussianRead by the Author
* * *
Height is gained immediately.
It doesn't help one iota
if the flight is rehearsed
right through the night
till exhaustion, till sweat breaks out.
Height is gained without a pause.
To rise to the heavens
pace after pace, night and day,
is the same as honestly
milling the wind.
Height is gained at once.
Not managing to finish the phrase,
not having finished your business on earth:
you feel suddenly the flight's phase,
you discover that you have taken wing.
1986
In RussianRead by the Author
* * *
Eight lines in small script
about an arrest and a long term,
about Yezhovism and torture,
about two attempts to escape,
about capture and beatings,
about further living
with a smashed backbone –
dryly, briefly, in brevier.
Read by the Author
* * *
The snow sparkled in the black years,
the meadows were bright in the black years,
the spring birds sang,
the vernal passions boiled.
When they led away the innocent under guard
the cherry trees were blossoming tenderly,
the waters of the lakes rippled
in those black, black years.
1989
In RussianRead by the Author
* * *
The whip and the honeycake. The whip
and then the sweet honeycake.
The whip and the rich cheese-cake...
If it's the whip and the roll
then why not the whip and the dry crust?
But this variant is very bad
when fate rules a gentle creature
with the whip and lash, lash, lash.
1994
In RussianRead by the Author
* * *
You got hooked
and a rag of bright sky
shone, while the little hook bit in
and you flailed around powerlessly,
striving for freedom, little fool.
You were left only to guess
what all this bliss for
and why you had suddenly been taken,
as they've grabbed you out of the dark of the non-existence,
having decided to give you an earthly name.
1994
In RussianRead by the Author
* * *
Let's fill in the form: date of birth –
that's the start of the delusion,
the start of delirium or dream...
The problem is clear, it seems.
And in the box below the date
we give our address and phone number;
on the left – our sex, lower on the right
we give our nationality,
then the signature. Well, is life clearer
now and how to manage it?
1995
In RussianRead by the Author
* * *
It's easy to go away. But to stay
in this world, that is to give oneself up
to the mercy of the years ahead
is not simple. It's much simpler to give up one's ticket.
No worries, no pressure –
continuous pleasure of not appearing:
I am not registered, I don't belong,
I don't look at tomorrow with caution.
1993
In RussianRead by the Author
* * *
The autumn rains rustle,
kissing the crown of the head.
Wait a little longer
if time will be patient.
Wander a little
under the black cloud,
and what if really
a happy incident is ahead,
and all that's happening doesn't count –
a mass of nos.
And what if you have never yet lived
in this wide world.
Your music has not yet rung out...
Wait for the beginning,
hiding your timid hopes.
1989
In RussianRead by the Author
* * *
Heavy days that can't be raised.
They seem to be bright, bottomless,
light, but nonetheless they are heavy.
So sensed and voluminous,
yet they burn down into a handful of ash.
How to carry all this heaviness:
weighty days, flowing to Lethe,
the illusory weight of events,
the covering of the heavens that don't exist,
the aquamarine heavens.
1999
In RussianRead by the Author
* * *
The heavens are playing with the earth,
teasing, threatening a landslide,
they threaten to set fire
to the dwellings and forests – in a fantastic fire.
And on a dull day they hang again
over this mortal world
like a grey, humble shroud
and there's no soothing the tears of the heavens.
1999
In RussianRead by the Author
* * *
Almighty, do not have mercy on me,
on the line of fire, of fire,
where the remains of the day melt
and blaze, blaze
and gradually die down.
Let all that has grown hateful to me
in my self burn in the fire.
But if You discover something
in the very depth that is still worthy
for flight... But what do I want?
I advise You, I teach...
1999
In RussianRead by the Author