Poem of the Mountain
The Red Bull
On the Red Horse
Unfulfilled Poem
New Year’s
Singer
Alleyways
Attempt of the Room
Poem of the Air
Poem of the Staircase
Poem of Tsar’s Family
From the Sea
Siberia
Wizard
Poem of the Mountain
Dedication
You will wince – and mountain from shoulders,
And to mountain – soul.
Let me about my mountains
Sing a song.
Black not today, not further,
Not to plug the hole.
Allow me to sing of sorrow
At the mountain top.
1
Thus was mountain, like recruit’s
Chest, by the shell tossed.
Thus the mountain wanted lips
Of the girl, in wedding dress
Mountain did demand.
Into auricle the ocean
Suddenly bursting hurrah!
That the mountain had advocated and driven.
That like lightning was the mountain!
In vain with titans we are flirting!
The last home of that mountain
You recall – at suburbs’ outskirts?
That mountain has been – the worlds!
God highly charges for the world!
Sorrow from the mountain started.
That mountain had been over the city.
2
Not Sinai, not Parnas –
Just the denuded barracks’
Hill. – Stand to! Fire!
Wherefore to my eyes
(Not May but October)
That mountain was – paradise?
3
Like heaven given in the palm –
Don’t take, as it is burning up!
Mountain has fallen
At the feet of steep potholes.
Like under titans’ paws
Of needles and shrub –
Mountain has taken by the floors,
Ordering: Stop!
O, far not alphabetical
Heaven – draft of drafts!
The mountain attracted us: Lie down,
The mountain brought us down!
Under pressure stunned,
How? Don’t understand today!
Like procuress, the mountains –
To sainthood pointed way.
4
Persephone’s pomegranate grain!
How to forget you in winter chill?
The lips I recall,
Opened by my twin sink.
Persephone, runed by grain!
Lips’ stubborn clover,
And eyelashes – jagged,
And the star’s prong of gold.
5
Not deceit – passion, and not fantasy,
And don’t lie – just not long!
Oh when as commoners of love
We appeared in the world!
And when, healthy and simple:
Simple – hill, simple – mound…
(The say – with rope to abysses
They measure the level of mounts.)
In heaps of brown heather,
In islands of needles in pain…
(The height of delirium above the level
Of life.) Is it yours! Mine…
But families are quick favors,
But birdlings fly – alas!
From what we in the world appear –
The celestials of love!
6
The mountain sorrowed (and of muddy mountain
Bitterly grieve in the hours of parting),
The mountain sorrowed of the pigeon
Tenderness of our fameless mornings.
The mountain sorrowed of our friendship:
Lips – immutable relationship!
Mountain spoke, that anyone here
Came true – under his tears.
More said the mountain, that the camp –
Life, which for century was market for hearts!
Still sorrowed mountain: at least
With the babe – let off Agar!
Still spoke, that this is the demon
Circling, that there’s no intention in game.
We had decided to judge the mountain.
Mountain spoke, and we were dumb.
7
Mountain sorrowed, that only the sorrow
Will be – what is now blood and heat.
Mountain spoke, that would not allow
Us to go, with another would not let us be!
Mountain sorrowed, that only as fume
It will remain – what now: World, and Rome.
Mountain spoke, that to be with others
We would (don’t envy one another!)
Mountain sorrowed of fearsome load
Of the vow, which it is late to bet.
Mountain spoke that is old
Gordian knot – passion and debt.
Mountain sorrowed in our woe –
Tomorrow! Not once! When over forehead –
Not the momento, but simply – sea!
Tomorrow, when we will understand.
Sound… Apparently it is simple,
But… Crying nearby?
Mountain sorrowed that below
Under which dirt – is life,
Of which we all know:
Rabble – market – barracks.
I still said that all the poems
Of mountains – are written – thus.
8
Thus was mountain, like coffin
Of Atlas, the moaning titan.
Town will be proud of the mountain
Where we from morning till evening
Live our life – like hit the card!
Passionate, don’t he hard of mind.
Along the levy of the bear
And apostles, all twelve there –
Honor my silent grotto.
(Grotto – was, and jumped the waves!)
Your game’s final movement
You recall – at suburbs’ edge?
Thus the mountain was – the worlds!
Gods take vengeance on their likeness!
…………………………..
From the mount woe started.
A tombstone for me - that mountain.
9
Pass the years, and here remaining
Stone, flat interchangeable, is withdrawn.
With dachas will be built our mountain –
Front gardens are embarrassing.
They say that on these outskirts
Air is cleaner and it’s easier to live.
And they will go to cut the patches,
Thus ruffle the crossbeams.
To string my passes,
Bottoms up all my ravines!
For it is needed – how to somebody
Happiness to home and home to happiness!
Happiness – at home! Love without fantasy!
Without the pouring wires!
I must be woman – and endure!
(Was, when I walked, happiness –
At home!) Love, not painted
Not with parting, not with knife.
On the ruins of our happiness
Stands the city – husbands and wives.
And upon the air blessed
While you still can – sin!
There will be shopkeepers at rest
All the profits chewing,
Floors and moves to contemplate
That into the home – each thread!
Thus we need – if to somebody
Roofs with the stork’s nest!
10
But under the heaviness of this basement
The mountain will not forget the game.
There are dissolute, there are no forgetful:
Mountain has mountains of time!
Through the stubborn crevasses
Summer resident will understand, grasping late:
Not the hillock overgrown with families –
Crater, into circulation put!
With the vineyards of Vesuvius
Do not forge! Giant flax
Do not tie! Of madness one
Lips – enough, that like a lion
Vineyards have tossed and turned,
Hatred of lava’s jet.
Our daughters will become maidens,
And our sons will be poets!
Daughter, a child grown out of wedlock!
Son, with gypsies yourself end!
There will not be green places,
Bodies, on my blood!
Harder than a cornerstone,
The suicide’s oath on bed:
There will not be a happiness
On my mountain, ants!
In hour unknown, in time unheralded
With all family will recognize
The immense and the vast
Mountain of seventh command!
Afterword
There are gaps in memory, nebula
On the eyes: seven veils…
I don’t remember you – singly.
In place of features – the fizzle pale.
Without omens. With the white space –
All. (Soul, all in wounds,
Wound – entirely.) Marking
The limbs with chalk – the tailors’ deed.
Founded strongly is the sky.
Ocean – the splatter pool?
Without omen. True – special – all.
Love is connection, not a spy.
The crow, fair-haired suit –
Let neighbour say: He is gifted with sight.
Is it cut up into parts, the passion?
Am I a watchmaker or medicine man?
You – like a circle, whole and complete:
Whole vortex, tetanus full.
And I you do not recollect
Apart from love. Sign of being equal.
(In sleepy fluff of the sleep:
Waterfall, foam of the hills –
Newness, till hearing secret,
Instead of “I” a throne room “We”)…
But that in the poor and deprived
Life – “Like it is, life” –
I do not see myself jointly
With one:
Vengeance of memory.
The Red Bull
He will play – time for candle:
With the bones – yes – in the dimple.
Mother! What a funny dream!
What a dream! Mom!
From right candle – the wax pours…
The child’s dimples!
The red bull will run
After me along the green grass!
Does not pour,
Salty tear!
Bull is red,
Grass is green!
Rusty lock, cheeky yawn
Inscription: “no extradition.”
Your bull is here, your horn is here!
Relatives, coming after.
Liquid lime, sticky liquid
Cemetery (mother:) “garden.”
Your bull is here… to live and live…
Relatives, staring after.
Now one, another tomorrow.
Clod. Quiet silence.
The mud clod, the voice clod.
In the right – handkerchief crumpled.
Sky? And so – haven’t been! Only
Twig of adjacent tombs.
From the shame you stare at ground?
Or the shame – you grow dumb?
The eyeball’s field – with sorrow’s field
What has become.
Without anchor:
Heels – after them,
With which they enchanted the stare.
Not to raise! Feeling – to understand!
Pushed out the door.
Not to forget - in the clay
Up to ankle – the old mother.
Having-spent, that is – handing over – from hands
(Not the hands?) – the next one!
Here’s your bull, here’s your meadow…
Relatives, returning…
Having established (just sell!)
That the man – is the mud…
Clear deed! With whom – bull?
Simply rushed to the mind.
Long, long, long, long
Way – three cities on the feet!
Mud, mud, mud, mud
In the hiking boots.
“At home,” “at home,” “at home,” “at home,”
We will then take Moscow…
Don’s, Don’s, Don’s, Don’s
Kissel, savory soil.
You are the mud band,
Ashbury candy!
Latitude-you-homeland!
Latitude of currant!
Pipy, pipy, pipy, pipy
In ears – stomping, in ears – nail.
Bull’s, bull’s, bull’s, bull’s
Bolshevik – is the name.
“Out of luck!” – “Give me a lift!”
Not in lacquer to go to war!
Boots day and night
Are chomping in dirt.
Black soil – black people –
Whispered with fig!
What after the boots
Smack after the hooves?
To me dirt in hooves thin
Road! Road! Road!
And I – bull! And I – horn! And I – fear!
On the horns! On the horns! On the horns!
I – highway,
Bolshevik,
I paint field with blood.
Pretty – poppy,
Pretty – bull,
Pretty – our time!
Turquoise –
Shores!
The spring air!
Not from evil –
On the horns –
Joy from the soul!
The heart – hearth.
On – the – side.
Mommy?
Merciful God!
The red bull…
The Bolshevik…
Markov’s, Kor-nilov’s!
Long, long, long, long
Way. – Bandage on the sleeve!
Mud, mud, mud, mud
In French heels
Of mother.
On the Red Horse
And wide open, and wide open
Arms – two.
And back! Stomp, equestrian!
That my spirit, vaulted from ribs – to You,
Not with mortal wife – with one born!
Not Muse, not Muse
Over poor crib
Sang to me, took by hand.
Not Muse warmed two cold hands,
Chilled the hot eyelids.
Drew off cowlick from the forehead – not Muse,
Drove into the big fields – not Muse.
Not Muse, not black braids, not beads,
Not fables – just two fair-haired wings –
Short – over the winged brow.
Figure in armor.
Sultan.
Don’t to the lips bow,
Didn’t baptize the dream.
Of broken doll
Did not with me grieve.
All my birds – into freedom
Let out – and later – not sparing spurs,
Among the blue mountains – on the red horse
The thundering ice drift!
Firemen! – Broad scream!
Wide like a glow – scream!
Firemen! – Soul burns!
Does not our house burn?!
Full blown bell thunders,
Sway-swing the tongue,
Full blown bell! Great
Is the fire! The spirit burns!
From fearsome beauty dancing,
On red torches, tourniquets.
I applaud – I shout – I whistle,
I roar – I aim the sparks.
Who bore it? Who through fumes and thunder
Delighted with eagle? I won’t awake!
Shirt – long – till heels
On me – and the beads’ thread.
Howl of fire, clang of glass…
At each one – instead of eyes –
Flight of featherbeds! Two glows!
We are burning! We are burning! We are burning!
Crackle, the thousand-year chest!
Burn, accumulated load!
Lord of all is my home,
I have nothing to want.
Firemen! Rooster, be strong!
Crash into the gilded foreheads!
That the fire wouldn’t go out, wouldn’t go out!
That the poles would collapse!
What did – suddenly – collapse – suddenly?
That had not collapsed the pole!
Crazy splash of little hands
In the sky – and shout – doll!
Who this – after – with lope chased
Threw to me the glance – overbearing?
Who this – after – with lope from horse
Red – in home – red one?
Shout – and out-shouting all
Shout. – The hit of thunder.
Like armor, uplifting the doll,
Rises, like the Fire.
Like Tsar amid fiery swells
Rises, moves the brow.
I saved her for you, - smash!
Free the Love!
What suddenly – collapsed? – No,
Did not collapse the world!
That wo arms – to equestrian – after
Girl – without – the doll.
Angry moon – slot in windows.
This is my first dream.
We stand, embracing tightly,
Over noise, where there is stream.
Up to the elastic foot
Flies the foam’s tuft.
We look, mutely embracing,
On the poles of foam.
Me – all his harems,
He – all my coats of arms.
We stand, intertwined sharply:
Side to side, palm to palm.
All to the foot shoeless
Soars up the horse of foam…
Swear, that now – to the bridge,
Flower while I’m there,
Handkerchief… He sees – and – simply
Into stream – with lowered head…
Does bridge shake, do I – tremble?
Blood or shaft – moans?
Petrified – dully – I stare,
While my life drowns.
Who here suddenly - with wave of coat
Threw me into the air?
Who here suddenly – with red splashing
Will flame – in blue fire?
Splash – and the victorious call
Smooth jump - from abyss.
Lifting body like haul,
Like the Stream itself does rise.
Like the Tsar amid reared swells
Rises, moves the brows.
I saved him for you – kill!
Liberate the Love!
What here suddenly – dashed – no! –
It is not tornado-blizzard!
The two arms – to equestrian – after
Girl – without – the friend!
Turbid haze – in slit of windows.
A new dream I am dreaming.
Night rushes – and way is such:
In the veins is pressed the blood.
Son! My sides’ child, -
The leader, lead!
Take heart, teen! Mountain’s spirit
One – there is of us two.
Here are only dawns and eagles,
And me and you.
Swirl! Gods did not return,
Not scary to the eagles…
Rise, firstborn!
Span after span – height will be ours!
For this I did give birth to son,
Gnawing the bottom dust –
That from the eagle’s wing
He took me – thunder of God!
Black height. – Sheer cliff.
The little hands – rods.
Who there – exactly Zeus
In the cradle the eagle holds?
Laughter – and in return – furious splash
Of the wings and nails – drill.
Who after him – cutting across –
With lightning – in the screaming of eagle?!
Rattle – and a thundering roar
Dissected the mountain chest.
Like having uplifted the firstborn,
Rises the self-same Raid.
Like Tsar among cloudy swells
Stands, moving the brow.
I saved her for you, - kill!
Liberate the Love!
What suddenly – crunched – no! –
This is not tree - dry land.
Two arms – to equestrian – woman
After – without gut!
Mean dawn – in slit of windows.
I am dreaming the third dream.
February. Curved roads.
In the fields – snowstorm.
Sweeps the big roads
Of the winds – the team.
Jumping on the ridges bent,
That – cool again.
After the red, red equestrian
Is the same way.
That – here’s he! Reach with arm!
Like teases: Hold!
You pull the insane arms,
And horse – with the snow.
Sultan – shaggy – in head,
And so – the willows?
Eh, matchmakers, don’t fold the hands,
Sweep, winds!
Sweep, piled up thresholds,
Above the rocks,
That liked dug in – became
His steep-legged horse.
And will heed the winds – with moan
To the moan in response,
And hurries with red rutting
My dream of a horse.
Shaggy resurrection’s takeoffs,
And thus – willows?
Uplift, uplift, the brooms!
Hold tight, the winds!
And what there the lump
Floats up – there?
Like reared up with the blizzard
The temple of hundred heads.
End and crown to the chase!
Crackling, into the forehead,
To me flame of horseshoes,
Into palms – edge of coat!
To help, with sword and thunder,
All the Hosts’ Tsar!
But spins horse – and with thunder
He thundered on altar!
I strive, after me – army
Of the winds in pursuit.
Had not chilled – on the choirs –
The horseshoes’ flight.
Like rumble of Sorokoust,
The snowstorm has swept up:
Throw down throne! – It is empty!
As if died down in the ground.
Moan, moan, walls!
The snowstorm, rage!
Faded from horses’ foam
Chausibles’ radiance.
Reels the dome. – Crumble,
Glory’s and strength’s host!
Body collapses – arms
Having crucified with cross.
With rainbows of battle vast –
The expansion of lamps.
Accept me, clean and sweet,
Crucified – after dreams.
Jealous hand – your holiday!
Accept the flames!
But what – from height – the horseman,
And what the horse?
Armor on him – like sun…
The abrupt flight –
And right in chest – the equestrian
Stands with his foot.
Flaming coat – in slit of windows.
Fiery – jumping – the stallion.
And not the snowstorm
Sweeps – did sweep.
And not swing of a sultan –
Willows,
Scattering the gray tousles –
The mill shakes – and not beak of an eagle
Empyreal – burying the nose
In the dense cloud of kettle –
With a rag in the hands –
Broad.
And damask covered with glass.
Again to sip - leaves.
What is my dream? And dream is this:
Your Angel does not love thee.
On the skull the first thunder –
People, people! – Or scarp on skull?
Biting into dry pillow with forehead,
Said at first: Does not love!
Does not love! – I need no braids!
Does not love! – I need no red beads!
Does not love! – Thus I’ll jump on the horse!
Does not love! – I’ll jump – to skies!
Spirit of granddads, jump up from chain!
Rock the century-old pines!
Spirit of granddads – Aeolus – tremble
My golden braids!
On the white horse ahead of regiments
Ahead – under silver thunder of horseshoes!
We’ll see, we’ll see in the battle
Which proud man is on the red horse!
Broken is sky! – Good sign:
My helmet is reddened by dawn!
Soldiers! One step to the sky:
With law of grain – in the ground
Ahead – through moat! - Tore off? – Row
Another – through moat! – Tore off? – At once
Another – through moat! Armors on the snow
I know: dawn? Blood?
Soldiers! Which enemy do we beat?
Burns the chill in the chest.
And enters, and enters with the steel spear
On the left chest – ray.
And whisper: Such I had wished you!
And rumbling: Such I you did choose,
Child of my passion – sister – brother –
Armor – the bride in the ice.
My and no one’s – till end of years.
I, uplifting hands: Light!
Will be? No – would be nobody’s?
I, pressing the wound: Not.
Not Muse, not Muse – not mortal bonds
Of birth – not your fetters,
O Friendship! – Not with woman’s hand –
Pulled on me the knot –
Fierce.
Here’s fearsome union. – In blackness of ditch
I lie – and light is the Sunrise.
O who my two weightless wings
Weighed
The shoulder behind?
The dumb voyeur
Of living storms –
I lie – and
I follow shade.
How long won’t rush off
Me in azure
On the red horse –
My Genius!
Unfulfilled Poem
Future – quarrelsome!
Where’s the motor, carrying – into the past?
Into storage, not tearing from the nets
Truths – obviously-notorious.
Into the home,
Where built in row,
Things stand in the end.
Not a second! We chase and we chase!
And – do you know which – rest?
And armchairs like horses in the house!
Would have thrown off the riders!
And rider – do you know at what?
Elbow, throwing off elbow –
Himself at us – with sharp elbow!
I won’t get off – I’ll throw off and crack:
To the rider the horse is no friend.
About what the armchair thinks,
Having strained the lion’s fist.
Took – with bottom, took – with pressure –
Grandfathers - not such is weight!
Of what are moaning the strings –
Under our spools’ zeroes…
Creak: Our week!
Crackle…
In our days – it’s much more hard
To sit than to stand.
To furniture – the new sun
Got busy! Century is not such!
Is in not time with horse’s hair
To beat damask and leather!
Damask – decayed, leather – decayed,
Hair – alive, pressure is done!
(Horse and throne: familiar deed:
Not after him – then under him!)
Who from you, granddads and uncles,
In some days, in armchairs sitting,
Saw scary dream about the flock
Of armchairs, under us tearing,
Grandkids?
Damask, thought, leather?
What be not – we thought in vain!
Our belongings became similar
To soldiers in October days!
Incorrigible one of cracks!
After Russia I don’t believe in things:
I remember, throwing back the head,
The furniture as it burns –
This – I’ll break through and this – it is much!
After Russia I do not believe in an inch.
With swing into oven –
The thing decomposed.
Not defended with previous lacquer,
Each thing stands with sign of words.
The first bonfire – covers.
Not compacted with previous,
Sour, each thing a meaning became.
Each block of chest
Sounded with oak of pain –
And in branches nightingales trill!
After Russia in ancestors I believe not.
In hour, when ship gave roll –
Why they did not come down from the walls,
Crumbling? With the floor boards crackling,
They did not walk, did not sit in armchair,
Looking: Do not touch! It’s mine!
Freezing the fire.
Did not burn things,
But previous days.
Country, where all firs,
Country, where all burned.
Hop-haired carpenter and cutter!
Well – got along, and burned – better!
Because the things have burned in fire,
They burned – in time, it was clear!
There was no deal: burning – burnt –
Visual bid: us – and bunk.
With brick near his home
The men fell into the flame.
Those, whom I into stove tossed
Those said: burn!
Thing, that like copper did heat,
I knew once: to burn!
What is not diamond on fire – slag is.
After Russia I don’t trust in lacquer.
Not naphthalin in nodule, but salt:
After Russia I don’t trust in mole:
All had burned! Fire – with
Raspberry poured – and with Ladoga spilled!
There was fire in Russia – moth:
Mole has burnt. Had burnt – it all.
======
The angst had called:
THERE. We rode on the spines
Of aliens: I sin: alive is God,
Alien! Upon the top of alien
Trees, with remainder of alien
Winters. Upon the tops – of alien ones.
Who – we? Drowned in the bears
The land, drowned in runners.
Who – we? Not from those who ride – Here –
We! And from those, who bear:
Teamsters. In wounds that burn
For luck hammered into dirt.
Lucky! Through done – with the naked ice!
Brother – thus with patron last.
I did not salt the stew, bread
Has gone. We were so fortunate!
All Russia in the drawn muzzles
We bore on our stooped shoulders.
Didn’t take out! Run with pedestrians –
In the night – coughed up with men!
Who – we? On all terminals…
Who – we? On all plants…
On all the harem abscesses,
We, for village standing,
For the tree…
For the gear having managed with broad,
Thus are we – white liners?
Knights with Mahova, and with Bronne,
We – gold-miners?
Coffin diggers, bedbugs –
Approached! Approached!
We did not let out the word:
Good! Good!
Dishwashers, rat-poisoners,
Home – top, thunder – stifling,
Thus we let out the word:
Good! Good! –
Russia.
Painters in the skies –
Thus we – rave from fat?
In the Fifth we built barricades –
We, fellows.
History.
Barricades, and now – thrones,
And the calluses’ gloss!
And now at Sharantona
They don’t hold the Russian woe.
We die of them. Under coat torn –
We die, into delirium pointing gun.
Rebuild the Bedlams!
All small – for Russian troubles!
Crutch raves with the spur. Sharpen!
With machine gun – empty cuff.
In the heart, after opening,
Is the ice hike’s sign.
Had not uprooted with all heels!
It will be known – there:
In the morgue the doctor won’t recognize,
For big hearts not in measure!
=====
With the spring no malt, no grain,
Not rye, not other sack.
Also naked is your volunteering:
What is spring or are we – denuded?
With the spring – hide, like goblin!
Nothing but the gesture up!
Also volunteering pedestrian:
What the spring or did we fight?
To return to spring – like in Army
To return, in forest – like in battalion.
The percussion spring of good will,
This you started crackling with machine gun
On bushes, on shallows…
But, the child will shudder at night –
With nightingales like with machine gun
Thus you …… fire.
To return to spring – like in Army
To return: well done, platoon!
With good will the spring striking
Every year will return.
Volunteers of one Army
We: Drozdev’s, Vendean, Greek –
With goodwill the percussive spring
Returns every century!
On first magnet –
Till vein flashes!
Birches: on them
Injuries’ patches.
Speck of birches:
Resin with chalk, in two paints –
Not a grove, but headquarters
In Novocherkassk.
Black on white – there is no brightness!
White on black – brighter than tears!
Loud voice: Well done, the Markov’s!
(On the whole row of birches…)
New Year’s
Happy New Year’s – light – land – shelter!
Happy to you the new letter
Misunderstanding, that grain’s –
(Grain’s – ruminant) loud and sonorous place
Like empty tower of Aeolus.
Your first letter with yesterday’s,
On which I will wear out without you and yours,
Homelands, now – from one of
Stars… Withdrawal’s and retreat’s law,
On which beloved – with love
Former and unprecedented.
To say how about yours I have learnt?
Not earthquake, not avalanche.
Man came – another – (loved –
You.) Most sorrowful of news.
In News and Days. Will you give the article?
Where? In mountains. (Window in branches of fir.
Sheet.) Do you not see the newspapers?
Thus article! No. But… I ask to spare.
Out loud: hard. Inside: not Christ-seller.
In sanatorium. (In hired heaven.)
Day? Yesterday, day before yesterday, I don’t remember.
Will be in Alkazar? Won’t.
Family. Inside: Except Judas, all.
Happy coming! (Tomorrow was born!)
To tell, what about having learned…?
Tss… Misspoke. By habit.
Life and death for quotes I am taking,
Like obviously-empty gossip.
I did nothing, but something
Was done, without shade and echo
Doing!
Now – how did you ride?
How tore and was torn –
Heart? Like on eagle trot,
From eagles, said, not falling behind,
Took the breath – or more hard?
Sweeter? For him not the height,
Not downhill he flew on Russian eagle wings –
Who. We have with that light the bond of blood:
Was in Russia – that on this light
Ripe. Established defection!
Life and death I pronounce with a grin,
Will touch yours – hidden!
Life and death I pronounce with a footnote,
With the star (the one I feel, night:
Instead of the brain’s hemisphere –
One of the stars!)
Not to forget, my friend,
The following: that if the Russian
Letters went to replace the German –
Not because now, say,
Will not happen, that dead (beggar) all will eat –
Will not blink! – And because, that this light,
In Novodevichy, ours – thirteen,
I understood: not without – and all-pagan.
Here I ask not without woe:
Did not ask, like in Russian
Nest? Alone, and the rhyme
Covers all nests: stars.
I answer? Not such a thing
Will be found – get distracted from ye.
Each thought, Du Lieber, any,
Syllable leads into you – of whatever
Be the thought (may Russian be dearer than German
To me, dearer than all angels!) – there’s none
Of place, where you’re not, but grave it is.
All like had not been and all like had been.
Indeed is there nothing about me?
Surroundings, Rainer, well-being?
Strongly, by all means –
The first vision of the Cosmos
(Implied, the poet
In one) and final – planets,
Since given to you – in all.
Not poet with dust, with body soul,
(To isolate – to insult the two)
And I with you, and you with you,
To be Zeus’s does not mean the best –
Caster – you and with you – Pollux,
Marble – you with you, grass,
Not to depart and not to meet – and
Visual bet: both parting and meeting
First.
On his own hand
He had stared (on trail – inky – on it)
With her only (how many?) miles
Infinite or without start
Heights above the crystal level
Of Mediterranean – and other plates.
All that has not been and all that will be
Outskirts behind end with me.
All that has not been and all that is –
All written off for extra week –
And wherever you will stare,
Leaning on the lodge’s band,
From this – from this, not on that –
Like not on the long-suffering that.
I live in Bellevue. From branches and nests
The town. With guide having exchanged stares:
Bellevue. City with gorgeous look
On Paris – the home of chimera of Gaul –
On Paris – and further a bit…
Leaning upon the scarlet rim,
Like funny to you (to whom) “to be must,”
(To me) must be, without measures from height,
Our Bellevue and Beldevere!
I’m throwing myself. Privacy. Urgency.
New Year at the door. What for, will clink with whom
Over the table? With what? Without foam
Tuft of cotton wool. What for? They beat – and for what
Am I here? What should I do in New Year’s noise
With this internal rhyme: Rainer – dead.
If you, this eye – dark it went,
It means life is not life, death not death,
It means – we keep warm, in meeting understand!
Not life, not death – the third,
New. And after him (having with straw
Laid – twenty sixth’s departing –
With you what happiness
Ends, with you it begins!)
Across table, to eye invisible,
I will clink with you with quiet clink
Glass on glass? No – not the tavern ones:
I or you, merging the given rhyme:
Third.
Across table I look upon your cross:
How many places – suburban, and the places
Out of city! And to whom waves
Like on them – bust? Places – exactly our
And other draws! Whole leaf! Whole fir!
Your places with me (with you yours).
(What with you for the extras
To speak?) What – place! And crescents!
And weeks! And rainy suburbs
Without people! But mornings! But all instead
And not started by nightingales!
In a hole I see badly,
Being above, you see better:
Nothing came out with you and me.
For this, that cleanly and simply
Nothing, that on the shoulder and with height
For us – to enumerate we don’t need.
Nothing, except – don’t wait:
Leaving from row (wrong one from tact
Leaving!) – and in which, and how
From one that entered is the row?
The eternal refrain:
Nothing with something for something
Something – would have issued – though shade
Of shade! Nothing, but: that hour, that day,
That home – even to the convict in chains
Granted by the memory: mouth’s here!
Did in means they sort out?
From all that just one light
Of ours has been, like we are only a reflection
Of us – all the light – instead of the whole world.
From the underdeveloped lands –
With new place, Rainer, with light, Rainer!
With the extreme provability’s cape –
With new eye, Rainer, with hearing, Rainer.
To you all was obstacle,
Was: passion and friend.
Happy new hearing, Echo!
Happy new echo, Sound!
How much on school tabouret:
What are these mountains? What rivers?
Are good landscapes without tourists?
Did not forget, Rainer, heaven is mountainous,
Thunderstorm? Not of two claims –
Not to view one heaven, another over him
Heaven? Terraces? I judge by Tatras –
Heaven cannot be not an amphitheatre.
(And the curtains lowered over someone…)
Did not err, Rainer, is God
A growing baobab? Not the Louis Gold –
Not one is God? After all over another
God?
How is it written in a place that’s new?
However, there’s you – there’s poem: myself and you –
Poem! How’s written with good life
Without table and elbow, forehead for the brush
(Of handful)?
News, with habitual font!
Rainer, do you rejoice in new rhymes?
Correctly pushing word
Of rhyme – what – like not – the full row
Of new rhymes – Death?
Nowhere: studied is tongue.
Whole row of meanings and accords
New ones.
Farewell! For connections!
We’ll see – I don’t know, but – we’ll sing!
With me – with unknown land –
With whole world, Rainer, with my aim!
Won’t disperse – scribble anew.
Rainer, with sound drawing new!
In sky – staircase, with Gifts thereon…
Rainer, with new ordination!
That they won’t pour I hold hand. -
Above Rhone and above Rarogn,
Above obvious and massive farewell
To Rainer – Maria – Rilke – in hand.
Singer
1
Chamomile, burdock
House – thus little domestic!
With that special look
The souls’ – heavy weight.
Home, that to city – with behind
Stood, and ahead – to the wood.
Genial like bear,
Horned like deer.
From which the spirits
Into all eyes are peering –
All near window! From pediment –
Like till ingrown in sediment –
What window – is icon,
What face – is ruin
And arena… Behind the former
I have life and shelter
With chestnut replaced –
My window it is.
And shirts! Like waves
Of arms – over life broken!
O, shirts! Gaps!
Only murals of wars!
War for sur-vi-val.
Thus night and day
With sleeves of shirts
The home wars with death.
Not scattered while sitting,
Not smelling with rich ones.
For which it’s not embarrassed
Before the evil and the homeless:
Birds aren’t ashamed
Of the towers – night overslept.
House, of which there’s no fear
Reprisal in people’s hour!
In this home, flown
To …… from hands,
In this ghost of home –
Are grandma and grandson.
2
And thus speech – about Russians,
Simple will be story.
Certainly was loader grandson,
And grandma – “a hundred years –
I will await – I’ll finish sowing…”
(Do not tell me to be living!)
For her to the happiness
Stands baby elephant, the eyes –
Fresh and alive, hands – wait
A demand, all to her – good!
At that old woman – braids
Is like silver living!
And cheeks – from the frost
Such I won’t profit!
Grandson came on a cart.
Grandma planted the rose –
In the garden – and on canvas.
But still – we won’t be more plain,
Than life – ghost to the propertied.
Grandson was the carrier,
Thus it is unclear,
Being them, above the might
Labouring for a bread crumb –
That himself was labourer –
Beautiful just like a day!
With spine – thus the poplar stands,
With eyeball – like light – radiant,
With handkerchief – like dandy – neat,
With face – like crescent – clean,
But, simply – it’s nicer to exist,
Having met at the gate.
And still it is unclear:
How does the swan this case
Carry?
3
As a pair we sat,
Said nonsense the cat.
We sat, waited –
Pair, and teapot awaited
Its time. Ended almost
The day. Who said, thus was guest.
Suddenly – the ceiling would open
And gushed with cell – the rain
Of notes! After coat! After jacket!
Thus crushed, thus grasped,
That once he had drowned
Both the spirit lamp and the spirit!
Upon the angel sounds –
What had the pair done?
The grandma folded arms,
Opened the mouth the grandson…
And in that hole, in the posthumous
Apartment – from river bottom –
Erected four
Hands in a prayer –
Like with palms. In foreknowledge
Of inescapable torments,
With Easter eyes
I saw: grandma, grandson –
While the face and forehead
Were not swallowed by shade.
Thus the top tenant
Moving into the home on that
Day…
And like in church it became with us
In holiday, in river flood.
Old woman started running to the top,
To grandson – having uttered no word.
I won’t bore and I won’t break,
Only press Your hand!
Sing, sing! Caress the soul
Of my poor grandson.
In our life – altogether wild –
You – spring to him, magnet.
Thus will come to cart – the face
Not having washed – in ceiling stares!
Yes, your great deed!
For your la of the highest –
With old body they bend legs:
Was young – so did sing,
And – myself I young have been!
4
On the rickety stairs
Where it’s gray from smoke and smells with the near –
Upon the wings of his voice
The top went down – to lower ones.
In this mixing of the wasteland
With storehouse, with crawl – flames,
Soaring in circle cloud,
Like fairies in that time.
With that difference, that with fairies – from hands
Diamonds, tempting to the eyes. –
My beloved grandson, and this – friend
Delightful: our diamond sound!
I know: reader waits for sight.
Reader, forgive for dare!
Having agreed that the nose and mouth
All, all was had by her –
“All” this not worse than our
We will swipe, like from the pillow hair.
What for is our singer’s face,
Since she all – is only voice:
Invisibility! Since we see most clear
The sky – with hail through the tears!
From this all until what –
But will not lift the sight
From – and in drunk cup – the grandson
Yesterday’s, eternal groom.
Like girl in mirror, in tea circle
Stares, like in ominous pond
Stares the swan, and in him the thunder
Reads.
(It’s easier sometimes for some – eyes
Lifting to guest – rather than hand!)
And easier to many, of course – case
Oaken!)
The dry or the wet –
But did not raise eyes, did not raise
Did not demonstrate diamond stars.
5
Branches quieter, birds quieter,
Than the snow bush quieter.
Thus they know, that will not hear
He, to whom you knock (here!).
From the roof falling drops
Fear – to be heard.
Thus they knock, that won’t be heard
In this knock – knocking of heart.
Doctor – in collarbone,
Starling – grain,
Fear – knocks,
Passion – knocks…
Knocking, more careful than breath.
At home? – At home. – I may?
You may.
Torso, less movable than visions.
This – I: your neighbour beneath.
To you from grandmother.
Nails
Burn – like raising the beacon:
But, you have darkness! – Enter.
There are no lights, all – candle.
I will go first. You – behind.
And with following, the grandfather
Stretched out by corridor,
With insanity, with wood,
With ford, exactly – of the kind
With vaulted blood conduit,
Undoubtedly, with his
Gulp, without turning back,
Without return, darkness – with agate
And basalt – and granite…
In the mouth – money
Having taken – after entrance underground –
Pay – with underground souls’ water
Slave after the leader.
And, further? Thus he had pulled
After shawl dreadlocks the nail,
That simply with corridor
Walk has appeared the grotto –
With word – stood:
He – poured
From steel, she – except
Shawls, after Lezgi’s waist…
Rose late – overslept!
Nothing have we caught!
(If, later, his daughter
Was called with his name –
Thus in memory of the hour
Full. (Thus remembers the bank –
With roses.) No meat
Swarthy – or white!
Lips – drier than chalk. With ripe
Pear – singing poured.
Sang – listened. Heard
Body – soul – and obeyed.
Thus became custom from these times:
What the night – from external dark:
At home? – At home. – May I? – Must be.
May I? – May you. (Tenderly, tenderly…)
Alleyways
And you didn’t see, young one – we know not what,
And you didn’t hear, young one – we know not what,
In loud white-crunched dresses
In these Ignatiev’s alleys.
Light burns on the light,
Must be, the required it creates,
Burns incense to sacrifice of the Lord,
From the oak it demands.
And from-where the ringing? – Wrist!
And from-where the rumbling? – Curse!
Let young child try the happiness
Upon Ignatiev’s alleyways.
Stump. Two potholes.
Collapsed the wattle fence.
Into darkness without trace,
Seven windows.
You think while you sit at home,
And follow as you pass the sixth:
Young fisher girl on the shore
Mows in half an eye: did not peck?
Will blow – will burn the bonfire,
Will spit – will give the dollar,
One smart and one beautiful –
Further – the tongue does not will!
In half an eye and from this
Sloping from tough shoulder above.
We’re not wasting empty words
In alleys of Ignatiev.
And how to enter? – With exit.
And how are speeches? – They twist.
And why should I get baptized?
Where are the Christs? – Coming out.
On the spider web – henge
To cross without hesitation!
Think, the child, say,
Here is you shrine.
Curtain-my-curtain!
My cut of Murzametz!
Part-ripple-blindness-stinging!
Not curtain for my face!
Hotshot, will have time, guess!
What, not marvel under canopies!
On the princess the black pigeons
In half-barrel before love are cooing:
About the white shoulders,
Of which there is no dare,
About the sweet blend –
After this there’s no regret…
About love, about flattery,
The green leaves,
About viands – not the nets,
Not to bite – the nuts.
And still, hotshot, not to get blunt!
Or come to – communion – cup?
The eyes look ahead – not to get stuck
In these alleyways of Ignatiev!
And tightly – on top thereof
Had smelled the handkerchiefs!
With apples, with rubies
With chess, flatters.
(From my hot lips –
Go the fevers!
From my hot lips –
Veins in body are buzzing!)
With chess, with rubies…
My sugar lips,
With mother’s
Milk you reek!
(Messy is my
Chill – foggy!
My fever is
Feverish!)
-----
A – I – heaven!
A – I – wow! E – lect!
Don’t – be – shy!
Apples – ruby,
Apples – gold.
Who will wilt –
It is known about it.
Apples – flattery,
Apples – flirting.
Do not put the hand
Behind the chest.
To keen-eyed – blindness,
To sensitive – deafness.
We cannot hear
The above pigeons.
To shy – whip,
Sweetness - to daring ones.
Do not thieve
The apple’s eye!
Like for the right hand
Whip and splash!
Instead of white hand
Lizard’s tail!
Whiplash – catch
The left hand!
In left eye of
Viper gone mad!
With belt over shoulder
Wants – squat:
As a heavenly river
Silk has gone.
A – u – heaven,
A – u – soar,
Con – si – der,
Of – the – snow.
Garlic – to apple
Uneven.
Ayu-paradises
Of heaven.
River – mist,
River – ripples,
With hand – little fish
Not catching…
Not onto the curve,
Not onto the side,
The boat
With rainbow iridescent.
River – sob,
Fish – splash.
From all little fish –
Just the tail.
And the foreigners –
Love for eyes!
Shemekhan’s
Sails for us!
(What the foolishness-thus-jerkiness
With blond head hides in the skirts?)
With heavenly saliva
Among other rivers
I’ll pass – to youngsters
No, they say, sweeter.
(Whispers-my-laughs,
Sweet-stringed, sweet saliva!)
Like after those whispers –
With kicking-howl the soul,
Like after those whispers –
The head with bull’s horn!
On the stern the black pigeons
In half-goiter of love are cooing:
About ribs, about gums,
The spring of hunger,
About linen – not brushed,
Not sent – the bow.
And what for us is linen,
The head of green?
Your bow to earth beneath –
Into the broad silks:
Bow,
Bow!
Under the comb
Put the linen,
That the son
Won’t say questioning:
To mommy,
To mommy!
Jets the hand
The width of rainbow.
You see – mom
Stands on the meadow:
Bow,
Bow!
Still bows
To the east – feather grass.
Wish,
Expensive was –
From memory!
From memory!
Oh! – Lightning!
Oh! – Burns!
But – lightning
The horse – neighs!
Once – on feet,
Two – for the braids,
Three – glory sing.
An –
Not braids – not rune,
Not rivers – not canoes,
Two reins,
Horseman, burn!
Beautiful is the stallion,
Like in an icon.
I am the horse,
I am the chase.
In-chest
Jumping!
Fire’s hot!
Burn!
In both reins!
Hey, my red ones!
In the chest lies
Seven, seven times
And still –
Seven.
Horseman,
Burn into darkness!
Darkness – into behind!
Not to stomp out!
My cheeks’ ash,
Collapse of my veins!
Glow in forehead – growl,
Rud-dy rein!
One is sweet-ness!
Twelve tor-ments!
Drop the reins!
Open wide the hands!
Here! – For century-days
The kingdom’s bak-eries!
Flax,
Flax,
Black
Tar kettles!
Don’t lie: resin,
But green are linens.
Bow,
Heel,
With flaxen eyelashes.
Lie under whistle
The hot arrows.
Ah, flaxes!
Ah, flaxes flaxen,
Flaxes of queen!
Streams from the land
Brought in the mention:
With eyelashes we went,
With eye sockets we went,
With earth we went –
Salons!
With salt shakers – eye sockets
At the earth of rye.
Why have you, famous guests,
Stayed for little time?
To salt shaker – land,
How much you want – of salt!
Why did you, blushing flesh,
Live just a bit?
A lot or a bit –
The drugs are given!
Walk through with me
The fiery torment!
Oh – lightning!
Oh – thunder!
Not – lighting:
Horse – in house!
Once – walking,
Two – jumping,
Three – sparks in forehead!
AH:
Not fire-not kettle,
Not horse-not saddle,
Two wings,
And in
A-zure!
Azure, azure,
Steep mountain!
Azure, azure,
Second earth!
Aim – of Lazarus,
Blueness – of Ladan,
Azure – azure,
My cold!
A-zure!
In remaining time once
Draw down, freeze!
Upon the last wind
With rye land:
Humps, beards, and furrows
Till green.
Spirit of manure, fenced –
My land!
Kettle without bottom!
Palm-depth!
Azure, azure,
Blue-of the lake:
A-zure!
In the final remaining
Through the-blue-all:
Not for early dinner
To hotshot – recall…
In smithy – they forge the fame,
To the lips – they bring the bowl,
They sing glory to the friend
In a-zure.
Azure, azure!
Stirrups are gold!
Azure, azure,
Where did you lead?
Height-of Falcon,
Mist-of Rainbow,
Depth-of Ruby:
Azure!
Louder, belfries-sleeplessness,
In all-the-ringing!
Here do not bow the heads:
Thus we will ascend!
Bluer, chimneys-censers,
In that-smoke-all!
Eleven on my chest and
With just one still!
Amen,
Has passed,
Sea waves,
Blue-Savanov’s,
A –
The whole world,
With mirage – days!
Without news – world,
Without news – us.
Blue-you-waves,
Be gone-shore!
Blueness of stars –
Position of ours.
But through whole -
See – gloom!
With the stair –
Robes of mine!
Jacket is hollow:
Won’t reach earth,
Shout of stones
Falls – and drops.
I preferred,
I went mad:
Blueness – in boots,
Blueness – in heads…
To fall – not to fall,
To swim – to end not to swim.
To satisfy the soul
With the gifts!
To squander, sweet!
With load won’t accept!
As if to admit –
I have to reject!
The first bloom,
The suburb only!
And of these lands –
There are thirty!
But stare through
The whole loss!
With my handfuls
Of the earth!
Don’t be lazy, dear:
It is not needed:
And do not lie:
And not a husband
Here, not a wife.
Do not burn wounds,
Harvests without arms,
Vows without lips.
Not having kept,
Give all away! –
Like a lark
The wound of mine
In la –
Azure, azure,
Shoulders are tight!
Azure, azure,
Where have you led?
There-lead,
Here-lead,
Poured in the ends,
Confused the trace
In la –
In azure – in disparity
From aim – to aim
Not on the leash
Weep, one cursed:
Dull is the sight,
Steep is the forehead,
The horn is gold.
-----
Goat trace at the gates,
Turn from the gates.
Attempt of the Room
Walls of inertia are numbered
For me. But – jump? Accident?
Three walls I remembered.
For the fourth I do not bet.
Who then knows, back to back?
Maybe, but may not be as well.
To be. And was not. Muzzle. But
Not the wall behind spine – thus?
All that is not wanted. Message “Bottom,”
Tsar recanted. Not only from the post
News. Urgent wires
From all times and from everywhere.
Played the grand piano? Passes through.
Blows. Goes with the sail. With cotton wool –
Fingers. Sonata leaf did lift.
(That you are the tenth, don’t forget.)
For that wall unseen
I know the name: the wall of the spine
At piano. Still – with writing table,
And still – with instrument of shaving
(This reception at this wall
In mirror is to be done in the hall.
I survived – I did stare.
Emptiness bearing chair).
Chair for all, who cannot enter –
Porch sensitive to feet – door!
The wall, from which you had
Grown – hurried with the past –
Between us is whole paragraph.
You will grow like Danzas –
Behind.
And with Danzas – her,
Called, chosen, with weight, with hour,
(The wall of the spine: I know the name!)
Not as Dantes enters the room.
Turn of head. – Are you ready?
Thus you through ten verses,
Lines.
In the back, attack of eyes.
But, having left the backpack behind,
Reliably the ceiling – has been.
I persist: As in living room,
Maybe I a little did slash –
(Bayonet attack in the back –
Strengths.)
And now cerebellum I squeeze.
Like a lump the spine takes a seat.
Thus the sheer wall of the Pin,
That – the dawn’s, that – of shootings
Light: clearer, than on shades
Of gestures – in back due to back.
Execution: what I won’t understand.
But, having left the discharge veiled,
Ceiling was reliably whole
(Still ahead – he to us wherefore).
To the fourth wall I’ll return:
There, where, coward, retreating
Stumbles.
“Well, and floor –
Was? Needing which wherefore?”
Was. – Not to all. – On swing, trunk on,
Not horse, not rope, not coven, -
Higher!
In “that world” to all of us
With emptiness the burdensome heal
Splice.
For feet – the floor.
How implemented is man, how interspersed!
Ceiling – so it would not drop.
Recall, how old execution – in hour by drop?
Grass would not grow in home –
Floor, earth would not have fit in home –
To all – those – to whom the stake
Is not hindrance in night of May!
Two walls, ceiling and the floor.
All, as was? Again – appear!
Will with shutter notify?
Room is furnished hastily,
On the grey white –
Sketched in the rough draft.
Not plasterer, not roofer –
Dream. On ways without wire
Guard. In abysses under eyelids
Someone has found somebody.
Not provider, not furniture maker –
Dream, than Reval more naked
They swept. Under all glitter.
Room? Plain – simply.
Landing stage is more friendly!
Nothing from geometry,
Abysses in tome of cardboard,
Late, but fully, understood.
And the brake of phaetons –
Table? Table with elbow
Subsists. Get loose by inclination,
Desktop – will be the table.
Thus, like storks – the children:
Will be need – will appear
Thing. No roast for three versts!
Table will grow with the guest.
All will grow,
Don’t get along, don’t build.
Under the sign
To say – which?
Reciprocity’s
Dense wood
Hotel
Soul’s rendezvous.
Home of meeting. All – parting –
Those, southerners for the south!
Do serve – the hands?
No, that is quieter than the hands,
And lighter than hands, and cleaner than hands.
Refurbished trash
With accommodation?
Remains there starvation!
Yes, here we are touchy,
And in right. Messengers - hands,
Hands – thoughts, hands – results,
Hands – the very ends…
Without spasmodic “Where art thou?”
I wait. In kinship with silence,
The gestures – wait upon,
In the palace of Psyche.
Only wind is dearer to the poet!
In whom certain – in hallways.
Passage – the military base.
Must go long, so that at once
Midst the room, with sight of God –
Lyre-holder…
Poem’s road!
Wind, wind, above forehead – the flag
Raised by our step!
“And so on” restored –
Gave domesticity the corridors.
With starling’s profile of the infidels
With quiet modesty the distance
On the measure of children’s feet,
In coins dear rhymes: shoe – lead –
Tile… in peacock train
There’s the tower, Eiffel called by name.
Pebble - like to kid river,
Far off – slice, distance – afar,
In child’s memory, bottom, stringed,
Distance with hand baggage, nurse’s distance.
Not blurted out to us (distance in modes)
That on carts is dragging along…
Driven till the pencil-box…
Corridors: canals of homes.
Weddings, fortunes, events, times –
Corridors: tributaries of homes.
Five in the morning, with letter anonymous,
Not only the brooms walk in the corridors.
Of cumin and sod it smells.
Kind of lesson? Of-the-hall.
Thus demanding, that had ground –
Karmaniola – Corridors!
Who built corridors
(Dug), knew how to bend where,
That to give the time to blood
Against corner turn the heart –
And around this sharp corner –
Magnet of thunder!
That the heart’s island
Was washed off of all sides.
Was created this corridor
By men – and don’t ask clearer! –
That to give time to the brain
To notify in whole line –
From “landing there’s not”
To the nodular of heart:
“Goes! To rush up –
Squint! And not – down
With the rail!” Corridor’s made
By me (simply – not a poet!),
That to give time to the brain
Places to ascertain,
And rendezvous – terrain,
Painting – counting – drawing,
Words, not always opportune,
Gestures, entirely sinful.
That love be in order –
That, all that to you is beloved –
All, without final folds –
Lips or dresses? Foreheads.
Could strengthen the whole dress!
Corridors: houses’ tunnels.
Thus old man, driven by daughter –
Homes’ ravines – corridors.
Look, friend! Like in letter, like in dream –
Thus I am a lumen to thee!
In first dream, where you lower eyes –
Thus I’m on you with premonition of light.
In an extreme spot of time
This is me – light eye.
And after?
There’s dream: in tone.
Was – lifting,
Was – bow
Of forehead – and forehead.
Yours – ahead
Forehead. Rude
Is the rhyme: mouth.
Because there were no walls –
Ceiling reliably gave the roll.
Blooms the vocative case
In mouths. And floor – you authentically breach.
And through gap, green like the Nile …
Reliably the ceiling sailed.
Floor – why, beside “fall!”
Floor? What for us to floorboards
Weeds? Little chalk? – Woe!
On one blank holds the poet…
Of two bodies over nothing
Reliably the floor did sing –
With all angels.
Poem of the Air
Well, here is the first
Couplet.
The first nail.
Door has gone quiet,
Like door, like another guest.
Standing – like fir tree
At the entrance –
Was calm, ask the widows
Like bone, after which is master’s
Call, master’s
Wakefulness. We will say thus:
Patient it was,
Like guest, after which the sign
Of hostess – all darkness’s sign! –
The lightning above servants!
Live or a ghost –
Like guest, after whom the knocking
Solid, not on anyone’s
Means – we die from this –
The heart of the mistress:
Birches under the axe.
(Split apart case
Pandorin, worries’ casket!)
Of entering – without count,
But who without knocking – waits?
In hearing assuredness
And in time. Leaning on the wall,
Assuredness in the ear
Reciprocal.
(Yours – in me.)
Knowingness of entry.
The sweet one (games in fear!)
Of the especial kind
Stay – with key in hands.
Contempt of feelings,
Over the world of wives and husbands –
That Opt’s desert,
Who gave – even ringing.
Soul without layers of feeling.
Like a fellah, nude.
The door made a stand.
Not about the ears?
Like faun’s horns did appear.
Like regi-ment… Fire!
If still a little –
From the noose would descend simply
From the strength of presence behind.
In the passion’s time
Thus shake the veins,
Pulled above all possibility.
There did not follow the knocking.
Floor – did swim.
Door threw itself in the hand.
Darkness – a little stepped back.
Complete naturalness.
Property. Stasis.
Staircase, like stairs,
Hour, like (night-time) hour.
Along the wall spreading.
Someone’s. With garden
Breathing, someone clearly
Yielded the step to me –
In full divinity of the night,
In the sky’s full height.
(Only the larches’
Noise, foams on the bridges…)
In full obscurity
Hours and countries.
Complete in invisibility
The shades even.
(The night is not black,
It is black – it is black!
Cinnabar of shell of rainbow,
Carbine – having seeped with the retina
The world on this and yours –
More I will not mess up the eyes –
With beauty.) Dream?
But syllable
In best case. – And in him? Under him?
It seems? Let me hear:
We, and a single step anew!
And harmonious, not pair,
That, the orphanhood of two.
Single – of every
Step – while not spirit:
My. (Not that, there’s holes in them –
To patch here – and shame!)
We need to straighten out something:
Or you will lower down to the span,
Upon all the ones who think –
The whole homeland!
Or – and had heard:
I sound no more.
Complete rhyme.
Rhythm, first of mine!
Like Columbus they greet
With the new land –
With air. Forget
The truths current!
With strong rebound
The ground
Like chest of a woman
Under wail-boot.
(Mothers
Under children’s stacks…)
Tight is the step.
Opinion against:
Not comfortable is the way.
With sphere’s resistance,
As through the Russian rye,
Through age – rice,
To you, China!
As if against the sea
(Against: read –
By heart) with plexus of the crowds. –
I fight like Heracles!
Earth radiation.
The first air – dense.
I dream of you or you dream of me,
Dryness, question of gray
Hair lector’s. Let, I feel:
We, and one sigh.
And not paired, twin,
That, of two suffocation –
Sigh of single chamber:
Has not yet swollen the Dnieper?
The Jew with citrus’s burst:
Have you gone deaf at last?
We need to straighten something:
Either you give u with a sigh,
On all omnipresent –
Fearful I request –
Or – and released:
I no longer breathe.
In a siege the time,
In Moscow typhus!
Finished. The suffered
In light sack
Of stone! Explore
The slime! Taken are the air’s gates.
Broken line of settlements.
Mom! Look forward to, no wonder:
The complete intake of air!
But complete aero –
Self – device what for?
Firmament, creep underneath
The volatile – fragile ship!
But – the light continuous –
Himself – wherefor the noose
Dead? Rinses…
Splashes… And here –
Do not pity pilot!
Here is the flight!
In the shrouds his bones
Do not row.
Course of aeronautics
Death, and nothing
New in it. (Of searches
Wildfowl? Screws? Wood chips?)
Air’s Achilleses –
All – although it be thee,
Do not breathe with the fame,
The air’s bottoms.
Course of aeronautics
Death, where all from basics,
Anew…
Glory to you, having left the gap:
I no longer weigh.
Glory to you, the roof having thrown:
I hear no more.
Solar communion, I no longer squint:
Spirit: I do not breathe!
Hard body is dead body:
I have gone heavy.
Than boats lighter, lighter
On the shore mica.
Oh, like the light air:
Rarer – rarer – rarer…
Past the mischievous fish –
Trout by the tip…
Oh, how liveable is the air,
Live! Livelier than hound
Through axles, and slimy!
And – hair!
Those who started to crawl –
More liveable than a watering pot!
That I – more slippery than
Fresh bast and onion.
With pagoda-music
Bead and bamboo, -
With pagoda-curtain…
Splash! All would have gone and have gone…
What for to Hermes –
Wings? Would the fins –
Float? And the shower pours!
Irida! Iris!
Not with your rain
Shemahins
Or Kashimirs…
Dance –
Above! Thus is the way
From clinics: first does not pull the hand,
Then won’t accept the legs.
Harder than ice, and bottomless!
Law of all absences:
First does not hold the heavens,
Then does not let into the weight.
Fairy? Naiad?
Broad from the garden!
Old one having lost
Body through water
(Splash of water confusion.
Descent of sand…)
The land’s release.
Empty – the third air is.
Gray-haired, like through granddads’
Seine, like through the braids
Of grandma – is rare!
Rare, rarer than bread
In drought. (Will peel off
All, breadless tops.)
Oh, how air is harsh,
Harsh, harsher than brush
For dogs, for dogs’ curls.
Caught the happy ones
Rarely. Like through the first oversleep
(For us – a backfill!)
Delusional crossings’
Rare, to tie-impossibility.
Oh, how sharp is air,
Sharp, sharper than scissors.
No, cutter… Like with one that pities
Into pain – to decrease.
Rarely, like through fingers…
Heart, like through teeth
Of reason – on Credo
Of half-open lips.
Oh, like sipper of air,
Sipper, more sipperly than Goethe’s
Eye, than Rilke’s
Hearing… (God
Whispers, fearing his might…)
And on a strainer
Just the judgment
Hour…
In ache of crops –
Why do we give birth?
All relentless,
Tops of all bad harvests…
On these crevices –
Not plow not ox.
Earth excommunication:
The fifth air – sound.
Thunder of pigeons’ breasts –
By birth from thence!
Oh, how humming is the air,
Hum, more humming than new year!
Humming is the cut
Of the oaks to the root.
Oh, how humming is the air,
Hum, more humming than the new
Sorrow, the Tsar’s
Gratitude… Under
The hail of a tin-plate more loud
Than lumps – in the deed,
More than treasure humming –
In the song, in the big-mouthed
Remembrance of people.
Thunder of sips of nightingale –
By birth from here!
With buzzing, with copper,
With blizzard-God’s word humming –
Only with the singing chest –
With sky’s palate or with
A liro-turtle’s womb?
Humming, more humming than Don
In battle, more humming than blocks
In harvest… By the bends,
More ominous than mountain roads,
Sound, like on the clods
Of miraculous Thebes.
Seven – layers and swells!
Seven – heilige Sieben!
Seven at the lyre’s basis,
Seven at the basis of the world entire.
Since the basis of the lyre –
Seven, the basis of the world –
Lyric. Thus the clods
Of Thebes on the sound of the lyre…
Oh, still in the room with boiler
Of the body – “lighter than feather!”
Old is the loss
Of body through the ears.
For ear – to clean spirit to be.
Leave letter for century.
With the hearing clean
Or with the clean sound
We move? Advantage of sleep.
The prechill of bliss.
Humming, more humming than grotto
In storm of equinox.
Crowns – crestfallen,
Hungers – more humming than womb…
And not more humming
Only that coffin
In Easter…
And more humming than hum –
With pauses, with intervals
Of might, and more moving than engine –
With pauses, with respites
Of steam engine after torments…
With interchange of the best
From the God’s nods:
Air with – better-air!
And – won’t say, that with sweet pauses:
With transplants
From local to interdimensional –
With pauses, with stopovers
Of heart, when from the lung –
Oh! With half-stops of breath –
Of fish ordeal with pauses,
With interruptions
While, with steams on the vane
With pauses, with overcuts
Of pulse – indistinctly stated:
With pauses – lie, once with spasms
Of breath… The hole bottomless
Of the lung, affected
By eternity…
For all – thus.
Others – death.
Termination. Ended
Is air. Firmament.
The music overhead!
Breath, always in vain! The end!
Suffered in gaseous
Sack of air. Without compass
Above! Into fathers - children!
Hour, when the offspring
The-truth-tells.
Firmament! Tract of brakeless heads –
And to cut it off thus:
The complete detachment
Of shade from shoulders –
Dropped! Groundless –
Ground! One’s own – Hermes!
Full and exact
Feeling of head
With wings. Of two ways
None – one and straight.
Thus, sucked in by space,
Temple drops spire – to days.
Not in day, but step by step
God through wildness and wilderness
Of feelings. With shot from the bow –
High! Not into kingdom of souls –
In dominion complete
Of forehead. Limit? –
Force: in the hour,
When the Gothic temple overtakes the spire
One’s own – cohorts of numbers!
In the hour when the Gothic spire
Catches up with its own
Meaning…
Poem of the Staircase
Brief caress
On shaky staircase.
Brief paint
Of face under paste.
Brief is the tale:
Not to greet, not the next day.
A brief fight
On the staircase rickety,
On the staircase avid.
In home, where at night they don’t fall
Asleep, each staircase is waterfall –
Into hell… -
With cabbage leaves’ path!
Staircase is from all descents,
The more (what – to live! To live – to burn!)
Are there partings on it, rather than meetings.
Thus, to seize the pink lips –
We forget sometimes: to greet.
Leaving these lips’ end –
Who – sometime – forgot: farewell.
Joke is brief on
Staircase sensitive,
Staircase beeping.
From sinner to sinner
On the hasty stairs
Bread of today’s tenderness.
Do you know the gospel
Of those – places?
Who is working,
He – is eating.
Expensive in stores!
Thin – adventurous.
Tomorrow you can sleep,
Now I must eat.
Hour with
Gas explosion.
So. Who rejected,
Will give - That one.
Give!
(Now gas
Is toothful) or for us
Will give –
(He’s a tiger and a leopard),
…………………………
Weedy case,
They’ll say, you’ll say: trash.
And the black staircase
A carpet possesses.
(Of suits precast
Truth…) Garlic, cats –
And at black stairs
Coty is.
They like the sweets
Warms of tightness!
This – is a classic:
To attic – garlic.
Maybe, they are being treated…
And about me – thus vengeance:
To be eating
Black staircase’s blackness.
Poet, bomber, bandit, we
Have one enemy: mezzanine.
Brief collision
On staircase pinching,
On staircase loose –
Like nipple, like violin,
Like sweaty stack.
The furnace works!
The brief reprimand
On staircase spanking,
On staircase rickety.
We beat till sparks come from the eyes,
We beat – down we lie.
What from us to exact?
Beaten – you beat.
Mistress in truss –
On rideable staircase,
On flimsy staircase –
The folder hurries,
The hat hurries,
The violin hurries.
Oh, would you sleep and would you sleep!
Ground, rotted, chewed to bits!
Hurry coattails,
Hurry coattails,
The floors hurry.
Sir! Hustle and bustle!
Running! Reward!
They themselves muddle:
Above? Below?
Cough of the floor:
In direct contact.
And there are bottoms
Of our staircase,
Who till tears, who with root,
Who, heee, heee, thus -
There are the tops
Of the black staircase.
To tap out you!
With pick in chest – already!
Gamma of paroxysms
From the basement –
To the roof – they bang!
With patches of majority –
Marx’s sermon
On fret of Stravinsky.
Brief rehearsal
On spitting staircase:
Bottom of voices.
Not rehearsal, but spit:
On the staircase light
Not entire – deft:
Hurrying pecking.
And rage – in clucking!
They work – and how!
What you won’t throw –
All – to go.
Who does not eat till satiety –
Devours.
Table – at home:
Ate – they put down.
And at our staircase –
Map of plates.
Diet of all sorts!
The boiling vat –
And at this Staircase – Frantsenbrad.
The Jacob’s dream!
Lucky into antiquity!
Gamma of odours
From cellar –
Till roof – they will cook!
Re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti –
Gamma of smells!
Plug the nose!
Like in hell the strand,
Red-hot – iron
Of the screw’s filings.
Which stack of legs –
With firewood staircase?
Final drying,
Final burner,
Final washing.
Final coupling
Of two – bone and rag –
From unsteady staircase
Final folder,
Final hat,
Final violin.
Quiet. Even the cough
Exhausted, shook.
And for our
Staircase is the hour
Of silence…
The final run
On staircase by the path.
The final cat.
Darkness has erased
Both dirt and us.
And at the black stairs
Is their own hour
Of cleanness…
Wherefrom – understand! –
Where is the final gang –
Rhein, pouring from the Alps –
Water against asphalt –
Of the yard…
Patterned – over yard:
There is bunch, here is cross…
And on the black staircase –
Map of the stars.
-----------------
Night – how to pronounce?
Night – sermon of things.
For sincerity night asks,
Wants to tell all things!
All! All humiliated –
Entirely, up to the unmoving.
Loftiness’s attack:
The thing wants to straighten up.
Screw of black staircase –
You think – the wall it molds?
Night: the prayers’ hour:
Screw desires to be pulled out.
Height – the thing declensional.
In thing – honour is laid.
I see the broken lie
With the straight line.
Yard – handful of dents,
Yard – not raked out for year!
With flowers, with berries –
Yard in the country is raving.
Thing, politeness throwing:
It is chalk! It is iron!
For us not to be with crosses!
Jew, prostrate with the forelocks.
Nail, tile, or filings –
Bosom feels the thing.
With the parodies craft –
In argument – ancestral might.
Glass, from expensive shells:
There is sand! To pieces!
Slap of the elements!
In the sand dust - glass!
Away, brokenness and lie!
Mattress: There is hay!
Mattress: there is waterweed!
All, all: Nature it is!
What smells of bomb.
Rope: was linen!
Fire, in bunch of coals:
Was God and he will be!
What happened to the cranes?
Fell – will be got to them!
What to pronounce once:
Wants the thing to get well.
-------------------
We, with handicrafts, we, with plants,
What did we do with heaven,
Given to us? First knife and first waste,
What did we do with the first day?
Thing like a woman us believed!
Apparently, not enough for us was the tree,
And iron – beat, weigh!
We wanted the boards, the nails,
Splinters! Digestible little things!
What did we do, having made the first
Step? To planet, where all about Him –
On the talentless breaking of things?
We – with crafts, we – with arts!
Having pulled on Prokustova bed
The thing… Closed and waits for the end
The thing – on the hellish machine’s bed.
By rivers was carried the fame,
The cliff the glory did claim.
In the – animated nowhere? – world
What had the man brought?
Must be, that he, his apparent
Spirit, aching god – inanimate
Object he did invent!
Of slanders the falsest!
You with objects, you with understanding,
You with iron (cheaper than platinum),
You with diamond (nobler than flint),
(With soap-maker, that I need!)
You with “real estate,” you with “firmness,”
On the stair, of which there’s none lower,
In this cramped space and in this mould
Established song and thought –
(For this reason we always explode!)
What with first equality of things we did –
Everywhere, in all environs –
To yourself you are equal.
Tree, credulous to the sound
Of cheeky axes and saws whining,
With the apple pulled the hand.
Chopped the man.
Mountain, having found the oars
Hidden (subsequently “metal”),
Hardly established: Wonder!
The man blew up.
Enlightened with this reception,
Thing with rubbish responds to rubbish.
Table always asserted, like trunk.
Chair broke? No, it let down the cunts.
In our lacquer squares
Noises – thought – of ancestors?
Simply, seeing stars in the window,
The nut stretched in the groove.
You awake – how in valley!
Case dried up? No, nature is said of the thing.
The domestic yard’s ball!
Gas exploded? No, he played the demon!
Just in time will rot the handrails.
No – “shot myself accidentally.”
The gunshot will be watching.
Is – intentionally has been murdered
With the thing, standing in indignation.
Into emptiness does not fly from construction
The stone – such are the strengths:
The stone demands the head!
Revenge of the cliff. From woods – vengeance of wood!
Situationality of this play!
Furnished with what? Damask or oak?
Insurance of these foreheads!
All insured – up to the tin Sitki.
This – the thinking cane?
The cue of the billiard!
Insurance from the rain!
From Hephaestus – with all, that’s in home
And the yacht – from Poseidon.
Appreciate gesture and thought:
Insurance from the gods!
From Hephaestus? And spire on the roof –
From Hephaestus? Carry above!
But it’s quiet! From all with one:
By Zeus they insure the home.
You still whine: without help!
Fools – is asked – the gods,
Since after each – tongue won’t take! –
Rejection - with ever house.
Bays, yachts, deals, blouses –
Did not drive in one insurance:
From possessions only this:
Flame, secure from things.
-------------------------
Things of the poor. Is the mat – the thing?
Or thing – is the board?
Things of the poor – bones and skin,
Altogether – meat, only the sorrow.
Where did we take us? Sight – from far,
From deep. Eyes do not try hard!
Things of the poor – only from side:
From the chest he did not cut!
Shelf? Happening. Hanger? Happening.
Happening also – with this phantom
Armchairs. Things? Spines and branches,
Whole in October forest!
Timid furniture of poverty!
All – what? – quarter and third.
Thing – long ago, in heaven clear!
Onto you – it’s painful to peer.
From you the sinful eyesight,
Like from ulcers, it’s hard to distract.
Viennese chair – there, where of Vienna –
Who? When? – the scary thing!
Better than all – here – dishonored,
Had been – home? Small! – attic of yours.
Just here has become the thing –
Thing. Yours – brow, going up in sign
? – this. On torn things boring, widows’ –
What? – brow above. (What for brow –
Eyeglasses!) Much to ask with the brow
The eye. Object – is eye sometimes.
Thus sometimes it is dry and empty –
The woman’s marvellous, big eye –
What – you compare – seems the spirit –
Basin, with the blue soul - the tub.
Equally with basin and with sieve
Yes – to tsar! Yes – in court!
This eye about himself knows
Each, having been called a poet!
The timid gear of poverty!
Each knife familiar individually.
You like a beast, morning awaiting,
With something – here, with all – behind window –
Him, empty, him – within the suburbs –
They – did read chronic of the thefts?
The clearness’s of things and honor’s
Sign: will not accept the baggage.
Because she is weak in the grooves,
Disintegrates before the eyes,
Because upon the hundred carts
But to bring together…
In tears –
Because not table but a husband,
Son. Not the case, and
Our case.
Because from the souls and hearts
The baggage they do not give.
Of poor things – worse and drier:
Worse than a bast, the snag more dry.
Things of the poor – simply – spirit.
For this they cleanly are afire.
-----------
The light smoke,
Above, above!
Clean, clean
Is lacquer from elbow!
Where is slag?
All – with the ash
Lacquer, lacquer
From elbows!
Ahead, ahead
Is smoke from lands.
Labour – Ham,
But not Cain.
Cuff –
Along the table.
But lacquer
Is the resin.
Table – naked – on things.
Table – with elbow is waxed,
Wax is clean, elbow is sharp.
Chilled is wax – sweat.
To them, to them – your bedrooms
(Prophetic, but not Jerusalem!)
To them, to them, like white
Floors – till the time!
----------------
Things of the poor – the pair strange
Of words. The marriage – threatens with a bang!
Thing and poverty – clear fight.
And will not rot the tongue!
Sexton – what for him is word?
Thing and poor. Connect? No, discord.
Nakedness seeks the cover,
From this often burn the cellars –
Frequent and slow –
Our hour is in red coat!
Tightness seeks the space
(Author himself in claw of crayfish).
Ceiling, crumbling – by the growth
Became – had sneaked, the hump amassed.
Rightness the scaffold seeks:
To tell all! Like from the flames!
And still – bunks is the place:
Not a ray. Archery stench.
Blindness seeks the tan.
Of all this – remembers the flame.
----------------------
Connection, couple sound:
Black – on fire.
On salary by fire
Life lives with fires.
At eternal skirt assembled –
Do not scare, housemaid!
Not stuffed with beauty, with
What do they play? With matches.
Mother, having to neighbour gone,
The box of matches forgot…
How licked is the floor,
Lighter than mirror!
Instead of lifelong death –
Life posthumous!
Dirt clearly is burned!
Home – elderberry red!
Saved is the kingly honor!
Red bush is the home!
Your slavery and your domineering
Look, look, how they are crumbling!
Whole heaven – for moment of choking!
Look, look how they are toppling!
Stove of the pattern that lasts!
Will burn the fortress!
Took apart all the clouds!
The linen will be drying!
Ashes at night? No – loan!
To save us? We’re being saved from you!
Do not stomp the golden pastures?
Us? Do they save – ones saved?
Wondering on pretty morning,
Ashes of bitch he is spawning!
With ripe rye – the slice that is final!
Linen rope – blooming with linen!
And on the staircase – with hotly sleeping –
Ascending – descending –
Rainbows…
----------------
Morning
Mixed up feathers.
Birds? Mine? We don’t know.
The first morning – the first door
Slams…
Sleeps the poem.
Poem of Tsar’s Family
Fragments
1
Blackberry,
Braids, wattle fence.
Near cradles – stare –
Second shade:
Red chest, rich fur:
Scary, bearded nurse.
Follows with the boot.
Into the cradle – with
The beard the child peers.
In a roll curl up,
Plug with plug!
An so, mother!
And so, one bloody!
And so, ……!
And so, cutie!
Pour, blood,
Home – in lodgings.
Thus to self in word –
Cross and key.
(And still won’t calm down –
Still call out!)
A-zure,
Bullfinch.
2
And again – with a hundred-pood millstone
Half – of which black one?
In blue ponds of satin –
Of the hour – of the tsar – amid the redness!
The real Red Sea!
From the red Khodynsky Field
Till the happy and pretty
Bleeding Alexei
Generous to the last drop!
Half – long ago or first? –
Glittered and of spring –
Hour – of the tsar I – last
In Russia…
Alive, do not fear…
Weakened – worn out – tired
To wait, despairing – for hours!
Sleeps the Heir of Russia.
3
Anya with round shoulders,
Anya with plump cheeks
The sweet milky rolls,
Of ceiling
Angels.
Brows in an arch,
Blush till buttons.
Between them –
Another one and their friend.
4
Here – two. In mighty rivers – caravan.
They walk by, they bow. And – I bow to them.
Russia! Not ruined by them – these
Big, holy, innocent kids,
Deceived with capital’s chatterboxes.
Which open glorious faces
Domestic. Eyes – of our Anya!
I don’t cry. I fear to wet embroidery –
Green branches. Pansies –
I labour for local Mother Abalach –
To have mercy… With greeting and bread
I hide for long, and with the trace
I bow…
(And tears on fingers, and tears on fingers,
And tears on rings!..) Oh, how much, holy father!
How long – and how much! Oh, take pity, holy father,
On little ones! Forgive the thief…
To sister Seraphim – Fedor’s sister.
5
Abode on the mountain.
Prayer on the crust.
The birch tree did not know,
The road on the edge,
That in the fierce frost
The beauty of itself
Siberian “cinnamon” –
She whitened and she saved –
That the Russian queen
Wrote on her epistle
To all the thanks I give –
To the Heavenly King.
Did not know the road
With birch on the end
Why cut bark with knife
The gray-bearded old man.
That in the tight cell,
With a homely hand,
The German princess –
To the Slavic prayer
Scribbled on the rag
Of Siberian birch bark.
What had she requested,
On the edge, ditches…
For Russia prayers:
For homeland – for yours –
Mine… From Siberian mosses
Till Crimea’s cypresses:
Spiteful after each one –
And still the beloved…
To him who’s on the mountain top –
Prayer on the bark…
The birch had stood –
Russia on the edge,
For tears, for prison, for fence –
I am grateful for all.
And if there’s little – prison,
And if there’s much – fence…
Yourself call price to me…
And if you’ll say:
Warps bark that is my son’s
Under the end of pen…
Stood the Russia –
Upon the edge of cliff.
And if you’ll say – Son’s… -
I’m grateful for all this,
===============
Burns, burns the birch bark…
Flies, flies the prayer…
Remains the birch bark
For centuries – truer than granite.
From the Sea
With Southern-Northern
Impossible, I know!
Possible – thus needed!
In something of road,
With air twisting,
With wood chips rushing!
Sleep lasts three minutes
I hurry.
With whom – and I don’t glance! –
You sleep. Three minutes.
What from the ocean –
Long - into Moscow!
Fulminant
Way – to reserve:
From your sleep
Jumped into yours.
You dream of me. Clearly?
Smoothly? Cleaner,
After Shetempelny lattice?
With letters –
I stand? I stand
With mail – pretty?
I am honest word,
Not a letter!
Free pause’s nature.
Jumping from barge!
What without edit –
Even without mark!
All having cheated,
Cursive of sleep!
Here from the sea –
Instead of epistle!
In place of dispatches.
Weight? Pardon!
I am not weighing
All – even with lyre
All, in heart of Chechnya
All, with whole there.
Sleep, is less
Than ten grams.
To each for three –
Six (mutual dream).
While you look, you’ll see:
Not anonymous
Nose, firm
Forehead, letter of letters –
“I”, “I” without surrender
In lips’ signature.
I – without typo,
I – without blots.
The handful of Alpian
Roses,
And hut on the sea, and so
Kind are the waves.
Here from the Ocean,
Handful of game.
Little – take little, like assembled.
Sea played. To play – to be kind.
Sea played, and I was taking,
Sea played, and I put behind
The gates, the cheeks – harshly, nautical!
Mouth is better than suitcase, if in handful
They’re busy. To shaft, sound, praise!
Wave took, lost the muse.
Crab’s corrals, read: eggshells.
Sea played, to play – is to be a fool.
To think – the grey hairs!
To smart ones. Let us play!
With shells. Temp un petit navir a
This – with heart, that – with lyre,
This, review of piles three,
Is the childhood’s treble key.
Picked up from the fishing boat
This – nibbles of hungry sorrow:
Stone – you I spare,
I better at wave stare,
Like Satan on desert descent.
This? – some love’s bites:
To re-establish I do not try:
Shallow thus is the bite.
Thus lies the one not put in lists.
Not from the love – the stubs – this:
Of conscience.
The tear to pour – I gnaw it,
Not remorseful not to many.
This – our game’s fragments
Tomorrow. Not to see.
Let us share. Not pity.
Not what I like, but what I take out.
(To us to bed from your son
Third – not into game?)
First – I take.
Only between fingers, liveable, is the sand.
Stand: like with stanzas’ fragments:
“The underground temple of fame.”
All right. You will write yourself.
Only between fingers, flat, is the sand.
Stand: the behaviour of rattlesnake:
Jealousy: refreshing
Is called the pride by the name.
And crawled itself with a full right.
For writers – to stand over eaten
Crab. Not a crab:
The glory’s brick carp.
The humble fad:
The stone. Pemza.
Hollow like a critic.
Gray like a censor
Over revelation.
Sleep the censors!
Our poem’s
Censor is dawn.
(The dawn’s – still the sharper:
With which Kastalsky
In friendship. The feathers’
Damage – through the fingers…
“Verses, my dear?
And is black!”
And did not stare:
Decided!)
Mill and mill, the circuit of the sea!
Mammoth, butterfly – all grinded the sea.
About him – the pinch
Of ashes – not to mill!
Thus I will speak out – and silent.
Sea! Beautiful miller lady,
Place, where on the sweep
Is trifle – us they dared!
Teaches! Chatterboxes!
Continents, that against the sweep
Of the sea. Born (goal –
Multiply!) on shoal to sit.
Favourable, with mulch, with oil.
Shallow immortality –
Life. Proud ones are out of place!
Life? Shortage of the waters
Of the ocean.
I’m sorry in advance:
I brought you so much dirt,
So many overseas wonders:
All, that the tide had born.
But leaves behind, won’t ask the brother.
Strange that – the tide carries,
Gives the decrease and the hand,
Will not recognize the notes,
Not to remaining ones in two, in three
In hour, when God brought them – had poured,
Departed… Harper… Orpheus…
Shallow – our leaf of notes!
Only not the minute’s fees –
I bore to you a lot of nonsense:
Like a two tongue has ground down –
The whole sea’s hem!
Like at fisherwoman’s, my neighbour.
How has finally you in store
Gift, on which in store:
Sea related to Moscow,
Soviet Russia with ocean
With arm of rebel – to Republican
The Ocean-Grand
With helmet. Dress the head.
And report to ears of corn,
That on your headdress is prettier worn
The red – not true: enmity
Of classes – the star of the seas!
To masters and to the ones strange:
While left behind Bethlehem,
The sixth wedge grabbing,
The ones of the sea – condemned:
Great hero, primitive.
(Spreading, but not the long sea –
To the sea layers.)
Thus report to the powers
Did not ask the name –
Thus on the Russian ship’s stern
The whole ship’s ruin:
The thing of the five ends.
Sheer cliffs, the ribs elephantine…
Sea became, was kind – to be.
Wave with the oar, eternity!
Attract us. Let us sleep.
Up to, but not closely.
Fire, and not smoky.
Not the sleep cooperative
But reciprocal:
In God, one in one.
Nose, thought? Cape!
Brows? Not, arcs,
Exits from –
Visibility.
Siberia
Tatar, Cossack,
Blood with mares’ milk
Of the steppes… Tobolsk, “City-king
Of Siberia” – forgot, what had been?
Landing! The horse!
So? – high is hat!
And under hat, smartness!
With delivery of the tax.
How – “prettier than nannies’ tales
Country: What in Perm – in heaven…”
The lured wives the Cossacks
Lost in grain.
Like unplowed ground
On the Tura river
Monks and nuns
In one monastery
Were saved. Not a chicken –
For foxes, girl did wait
The monk. Pokrovsko-Tushinsky
Monastery stands.
(With bony servant
Push: Where do you stare?
Rasputin Grisha went
With cup in that monastery).
Cossacks to hold
In strictness? Lambs they have found!
All governors build,
All in row - construction sites.
They burn! Burn, burn, Siberia –
New! Blind Moscow –
Old! With jumps of lynxes,
Foxes – to Pokrov –
With tails – that won’t go cold,
With free people, food:
To Ivan Vasilyevich
End, to Stroganoffs
Like given in hand.
Slice about black – about day
Like for water young women –
For food – young men.
In one – “pull off skin”
Detour – “your own!”
Ermak went to the bottom
With the very first millstone.
Farewell, housekeeping!
Farewell, beard!
Farewell, warriors!
The nests of Peter
Of colorful down,
Of the sharp nails
In the tripe German –
Matthew Gagarin.
Eagle-governor!
That same eagle
From the town in three
Versts Tobol
Diverted and higher
The college of the birds
Hanging for bribery
Peter Yustic –
Against boards.
Leaky Armenian.
Look – for death asks.
Who? Teddy-Barnak.
On the straw I lie,
I don’t reprove the tsars.
Not you Soimonov,
Having saved the tsar’s life?
(With the nostril torn?)
To prove, so?
And exiled Anne
Boils the salt
In Okhotsk.
Into the carriage!
Guilt is forgiven.
Nostril – though not this
But increased.
And each ravine
Sang about this song:
Like Teddy-Barnak
Became governor
Of Tobol.
The progeny’s light.
Yasen-Fenist!
Siberian sun –
Checherin Dennis.
Ignorant in borders.
Like sun and like rain
Giving for weakness,
Giving for strength.
Russian speech “here” –
With the word introduced,
In open gown,
With open face,
With open handful –
In frosty salt –
With Prince of Obdor
And Vali-Khan.
But so firmly
You had been loved
By the one of the steppe,
Steppe-Baraba,
Which – with the versts
Of obstinate mares!
You, with the handful
Of salt – had settled.
Sow, uncle, the rye!
Weave, girl, canvas!
Cannot crawl
In church – in grass
In the bushes, in the forests
Goat cannot crawl through –
To Denis Ivanovich
Eternal honor.
Thus, the highway
Equated with each hut,
Siberian Potemkin
Went with Taurides
In step.
Don’t stumble
While stepping
On ancient state pole,
I mean dishonor
Of Menshikov-Lightest
In paints – till death!
Corpse, icy mummy
Of tundra – frozen bones
Of Menshikov in Berezov.
(Without Saardam carpenter
Given, taken away in schadenfreude
Sword – did not stich in sieve! –
Only and all –
Tundra, cloudberry is frozen…
Thus not despite, loving
The mirage distance,
The first sovereign
Friend…)
Where snowstorm runs around,
Who will caress me,
Gray-haired? Toblosk, city of the tsar
Siberia, what has been – what became!
How in life to count,
Besides the dead,
Your twenty three thousand souls,
With twenty three churches –
Where it is stolen,
Thus prayed, Cossack!
With large yards,
Barking to the crack
Of leading carriage
In mud furrow.
With only candy –
Without sign – in home…
Don’t draw out in error:
“My coffin, coffin of pine!”
With boardwalk sheathing
Of walls, and bridges’ boards
And pavements… And all sleeps
Might… Boards – coat – snowdune
Tobolsk, Tobolsk, boardwalk city!
Tobolsk, boardwalk coffin!
Wizard
He was our angel, he was our demon,
Our governor – our wizard,
Our prince and knight. – He to us all had been
Among men!
In him was so much abundance,
That I don’t know what I’ll be starting!
We loved him fiercely –
Just the spring.
Just one his ring in the hallway –
And ague embraced us,
And burned till insanity
Forehead and eyes.
And how had moved the roots of hair –
Oh, this is shivering and terror!
And hallway was more spacious,
And still – chest.
And suddenly had chilled the hands,
And we did not feel our feet.
Seven times
Is this ringing during the week!
He’s here. Our first and the last!
And all belonging to us!
He leaves the anterior!
He’s here, he’s here!
He flies to us like a bird,
And flies into our net!
And wants to whirl at once,
To sing and shout.
Jumping across three steps
We run up on steep staircase
In our golden mezzanine –
And of the spring.
Where is impossible mess –
Where only broke out thunders
On this pile of notebooks
And with a feather.
Over this hand-organs’ horde,
Of dolls and beasts of cardboard,
The half-gnawed bagels,
Calendars,
Indescribable boxes,
With things not on any taste,
Empty vials without corks,
Beads of glass,
Whose dazzling bunches
Clinquantes, eclantes grappes –
Ringing entangle the bunches
For our hats.
We sit – we look – we know – we love,
And we feel, not letting down eyes,
That we would kill ourselves for him,
And he – for us.
Two horses in fire and in soap –
That’s us! Catch, while there’s no sloth!
We speak of how we lived
The day before.
Of how, on hall we ran
This night in the moon,
And what we had stated
In dream later.
And how – we were in ecstasy!
For our invincible souls
Management of our two schools
Chases us both.
We never will wed,
Thus all three will remain!
O, we never will wed,
We’ll sooner be dead!
Like life has been for us –
Gambling cloth – vivat!
Behind John – in heaven,
To hell – behind him Don Juan.
Muzzle of speaking Aetna –
Still speaking mouth.
Return tornado and swirl,
Return whirlpool.
Here both hosannah and curse,
Here all of it burns.
Of all untold in the world
He speaks.
To us – we seemed – wound to death
With daggers of the green eyes,
On couch soaring like a snake!
Oh how many times
With maddened cobra’s hisses
He cursed us and universe –
And once again became kind…
Almost in hour.
Ventriloquism – mottoes
Ornates – oh, king of rogues!
But they relate from beneath,
That the tea is ready.
Among five-pood women
He hangs in sight as a pood:
Thus light, harsh, precise, trim,
Thus scarily thin.
But no – he weighs nothing!
He’s angel-like – ethereally – young!
His face, like crescent young,
Midst full moons.
Leaning on arm with the chin –
Of this, how quiet are evenings,
He reads. – How can we read
The poems to aunts?
Oh, how he’s dear, and how did start
Exaggerated-polite!
How, smiling, hides the sting
And how, crossing
His magical arms,
He can – neighbour, beware!
To boredom can give
Empty speech.
But suddenly – at once and impetuously! –
With a mutiny he flashes,
For the most harmless phrase
With a knife threatens.
For a half-second sedate,
Trigger at foamy mouth carried.
Farewell, comfort, and birthday
Farewell, pie!
Tea’s finished. Shades have grown longer,
And purred the samovar.
Sooner not fresh, not in the spring
Tversk boulevard!
Of Bodler it’s enough to us!
Let wind blow into our face!
In Gogol’s language sing the doors,
Screeches the porch. –
In the big hats wide-rimmed
We, it seems to me, are still more dear…
And this smell, this smell
Of poplars.
Boulevard shines. Upon the way
Are the long and slanting rays.
The hoops run, legs behind,
Balls fly,
Others remain in nets.
And boy in the “Varangian” hat
Dress in Scottish cells
The step directs.
Shining are curls, cheeks, eyes,
Howler has puffed up and gone hoarse.
Carriages screech with wheels,
Lingering creak.
Thus mother watches sharp-eyed
After the girl, like copper, with braid.
In one hand – pail,
In another – bear.
Some boy is asking for porridge.
Oh, how he, poor one, did not grow
Till the school cap
And cigarettes!
And curl, the curls, and curl, the bands!
Alas, there is no coming back!
Students walk along in pairs
Among the kids.
The sun upon the alleys plays…
How life is simple and beautiful!
We are about thirty years:
His summer.
Oh, how you’ll now retell –
Fourteen – sixteen years!
We walk, our knight in the middle,
Poet – of ours.
We on the sides, like two pendants,
And each one sees us:
Fracture of cheek, dry and harsh,
The green eye,
Sharp edge of a beard,
Like evil edge of a dagger,
Chiselled nose and precise outline
Of the collar.
(Who with our wandering knight
Will now take in ray of gold?..)
Over the red-hot, ghoul,
Heavy mouth –
Moustache, flying high,
Arrogant half-ring…
And the side into his face
All looking.
And there, in the boundless fields,
Servant of the Heavenly King,
Pig-iron great-grandson of Abraham
Lit fire to dawn.
On all shines the scarlet sunset,
Blaze cupolas somewhere,
Blaze our halls’ windows
And mirrors.
From the piano’s black depths
Bloom scarlet brushes of roses.
“I’m night of the Grail and the Rose,
With me is Christ,
But went with me on all roads
He, who here is present.
Between Devil and the Lord
I’m torn apart.
Two truths – two ways – two powers –
Two chasms: Dante and Baudelaire!”
He, like in French, dear,
Burred “Er.”
But you will not leave Dante, dear,
And with him, darling, Baudelaire!”
Quietly we press the keys,
And another after him –
And sounds – with swarm of bees from the hive –
Buzz and wind – who is right?
Our Knight of Rose through the chairs
Headlong flies.
Oh, not the universe older –
Boy from head to heels!
On the first march’s chord
He is soldier – all!
Chu! – Pipe’s ringing! – Chu! – Horses stomping!
Crackling of the drum! – Hat!
And, to hell smarts and experience!
Hurrah! Hurrah!
He is He, in whose white fingers
Are pressed hearts and fates, pressed is world.
Over him is crumpled and green
Simple coat.
He is One, who near Kremlin towers
Stood into his whole height small,
Painted in whose freestyle flowers
Is the bridge of Arkol.
Maybe our faces had been pale,
The chest tears up the knocking of heart.
There is no time to stand still,
There is no strength to sigh.
With magic power of the arms
Upon the keys – already flies!
Thunder the effervescent sounds,
Like waterfall.
Circus, red-hot, like Sahara
Host of the red-haired kings.
Two prides of the earth’s sphere:
The lion and the kid.
Under the dome – like tsar in palace
Shows off the British flag.
The checkered legs spreading,
The fool fell…
In coat of multi-coloured sequins,
Under the speech of the strained strings,
Upon the square flew the teen,
Young just like the morning!
Hello, Ladies and Lords!
Shakes the rope tight
Under this little and hard
His foot.
In his multi-starred slake
Wherefrom – to change – the sound.
The music case is playing,
The ancient friend,
All time to hoarseness, to moan,
Playing three of these plays:
The march of dolls – Auf der Blauen Donau –
And ecossaise.
In world of tapestries and voices
Opens the secret path:
Oh, heaven of gold-haired garlands!
Oh, in three step waltz!
Under waltz innocent, waltz ancient,
Our three springs dance –
With living room’ cold mirror –
Are reflected.
Thus, having thrice the hall circled, -
The triple cane as it did yearn –
We swim into white statues of kingdom
And of the books of yore.
On tower of case, gray and dusty,
Having seen the better years,
The owl sits sadly
With the cat’s face.
With stuffed owl in vicinity
Sleeps Zeus, granddad inexplicable,
With whom they frightened us in childhood,
That – he is cannibal.
Like the crowded honeycomb –
Row of bookshelves. Touched the light
The parchment bindings
Of books ancient.
Light of Greece and Rome’s glory –
Innumerable tomes!
Here – how much sun we did not bear,
The winter is always.
Pinker with a final sun,
Plato lies thrown open…
Bust of Apollo – plan of Museum –
And still – like a dream.
Already on the home of shutters
Knocking, they slam.
In living room – the late fire is where?
Not a ray is there.
Littler than all and than light littler,
The knocks all nearer and nearer…
The half of the study
Has become blind suddenly.
Still with one sturdy eye
Left window has gone white.
But shutters knocked – and at once
It has become completely dark.
Self-forgetfulness – nirvana –
Why, Phoenixes, you got caught in net?
Upon far rollers of the couch
I will not sit!
In the corner had sighed something,
And something wavered a bit.
Quietly the gates are screeching:
To someone in the way.
And someone the return way holds -
Our hands have become ice –
In irrevocable, spellbound,
Our old house.
Mother underground, father in Cairo…
Still some spot!
In the world nothing funny
Is funny for us.
We understood without a word,
That white at the case – is coffin.
And heart, horseshoe having lost,
Flies in a gallop.
“There’s night in the world. It is starless.
In world there’s spirit, it is all deceit.
There is the world. Its name – is abyss
And the sea.
Who had swam in this ocean –
To whom there’s no ways in return!
I died in it. Devil, return!
Do not touch the children!
And you, unrestrained children,
With mind, like ice piercing –
With thousand-year madness,
You, in whom sings,
And complains, and languishes –
All the untold earth!
You, roses, you, streams, you, birds,
You, poplars –
You, dead Lazaruses from coffin
Pushing in the greenness of lindens,
You, without which long ago
Had become our world
Deceased – till blurry ghostliness
On three rotten whales –
Oh, golden fish! The violins
In my hands –
In the short grotesque skirt
Worlds carrying to gods,
How to me snuggled up blindly
Like two sisters,
You, whose father is in Cairo,
Whose mother he chilled and tracked –
Know, to you two in the world
There is no salvation yet!
You want – I will tear the patch?
I will open for you new way?”
“No, better tell me about
Anything the fairy tale…”
Oh Ellis! Beauty, youth, freshness,
Innocent and magic nonsense!
Angel’s weeping! Teeth screeching!
The holy one at dance,
Without thought of urgent bread
Living – whom and how – God is!
I don’t know, if in heaven is God! –
But, if He is –
Now already, in this world,
All sin till the last
Are left for you after these
My poems.
Oh Ellis! Knight without treason!
Son of bluest of homelands!
Walls with you moved apart
In another life…
Where closed up our eyelids
In the empty desert lands –
You- our and we – yours. In centuries
Of the centuries. Amen.