Сочинения Иосифа Бродского. Том IV

In the autumnal blue

of your church-hooded New

England, the porcupine

sharpens its golden needles

against Bostonian bricks

to a point of needless

blinding shine.

White foam kneels and breaks

on the altar. People’s

eyes glitter inside

the church like pebbles

splashed by the tide.

What is Salvation, since

a tear magnifies like glass

a future perfect tense?

The choir, time and again,

sings in the key of the Cross

of Our Father’s gain,

which is but our loss.

There will be a lot,

a lot of Almighty Lord,

but not so much as a shred

of your flesh. When man dies

the wardrobe gapes instead.

We acquire the idle state

of your jackets and ties.

On the Charles’s bank

dark, crowding, printed letters

surround their sealed tongue.

A child, commalike, loiters

among dresses and pants

of vowels and consonants

that don’t make a word. The lack

of pen spells

their uselessness. And the black

Cadillac sails

through the screaming police sirens

like a new Odysseus keeping silence.

Planes at Logan thunder

off from the brown mass

of industrial tundra

with its bureaucratic moss.

Huge autoherds graze

on gray, convoluted, flat

stripes shining with grease

like an updated flag.

Shoals of cod and eel

that discovered this land before

Vikings or Spaniards still

beset the shore.

In the republic of ends

and means that counts each deed

poetry represents

the minority of the dead.

Now you become a part

of the inanimate, plain

terra of disregard

of the common pain.

You knew far more

of death than he ever will

learn about you or

dare to reveal.

It might feel like an old

dark place with no match

to strike, where each word

is trying a latch.

Under this roof

flesh adopts all

the invisibility of

lingering soul.

In the sky with the false

song of the weathercock

your bell tolls

— a ceaseless alarm clock.

One more Christmas ends

soaking stripes and stars.

All my Polish friends

are behind steel bars,

locked like zeroes in

some graph sheet of wrath:

as a discipline

slavery beats math.

Nations learn the rules

like a naughty boy

as the tyrant drools

manacles in joy.

One pen stroke apiece,

minus edits plus

helping the police

to subtract a class.

From a stubborn brow

something scarlet drops

on the Christmas snow.

As it turns, the globe’s

face gets uglier,

pores becoming cells,

while the planets glare

coldly, like ourselves.

Hungry faces. Grime.

Squalor. Unabashed

courts distribute time

to the people crushed

not so much by tanks

or by submachine

guns as by the banks

we deposit in.

Deeper than the depth

of your thoughts or mine

is the sleep of death

in the Vujek mine;

higher than your rent

is that hand whose craft

keeps the others bent —

as though photographed.

Powerless is speech.

Still, it bests a tear

in attempts to reach,

crossing the frontier,

for the heavy hearts

of my Polish friends.

One more trial starts.

One more Christmas ends.

To this corner of Grant and Vallejo

I’ve returned like an echo

to the lips that preferred

then a kiss to a word.

Nothing has changed here. Neither

the furniture nor the weather.

Things, in one’s absence, gain

permanence, stain by stain.

Cold, through the large steamed windows

I watch the gesturing weirdos,

the bloated breams that warm

up their aquarium.

Evolving backward, a river

becomes a tear, the real

becomes memory which

can, like fingertips, pinch

just the tail of a lizard

vanishing in the desert

which was eager to fix

a traveler with a sphinx.

Your golden mane! Your riddle!

The lilac skirt, the brittle

ankles! The perfect ear

rendering «read» as «dear».

Under what cloud’s pallor

now throbs the tricolor

of your future, your past

and present, swaying the mast?

Upon what linen waters

do you drift bravely toward

new shores, clutching your beads

to meet the savage needs?

Still, if sins are forgiven,

that is, if souls break even

with flesh elsewhere, this joint,

too, must be enjoyed

as afterlife’s sweet parlor

where, in the clouded squalor,

saints and the ain’ts take five,

where I was first to arrive.

This is the house destroyed by Jack.

This is the spot where the rumpled buck

stops, and where Hans gets killed.

This is the wall that Ivan built.

This is the wall that Ivan built.

Yet trying to quell his sense of guilt,

he built it with modest gray concrete,

and the booby traps look discreet.

Under this wall that (a) bores, (b) scares,

barbed-wire meshes lie flat like skeins

of your granny’s darnings (her chair still rocks!).

But the voltage’s too high for socks.

Beyond this wall throbs a local flag

against whose yellow, red, and black

Compass and Hammer proclaim the true

Masonic dream’s breakthrough.

The border guards patiently in their nest

through binoculars scan the West

and the East; and they like both views

devoid, as it were, of Jews.

Those who are seen here, thought of, felt,

are kept on a leash by the sense of Geld

or by a stronger Marxist urge.

The wall won’t let them merge.

Come to this wall if you hate your place

and face a sample of cosmic space

where no life forms can exist at all

and objects may only fall.

Come to this scornful of peace and war,

petrified version of either/or

meandering through these bleak parts which act

like your mirror, cracked.

Dull is the day here. In the night

searchlights illuminate the blight

making sure that if someone screams,

it’s not due to bad dreams

For dreams here aren’t bad: just wet with blood

of one of your like who’s left his pad

to ramble at will; and in his head

dreams are replaced with lead.

Given that, it’s only time

who has guts enough to commit the crime

of passing this place back and forth on foot:

at pendulums they don’t shoot.

That’s why this site will see many moons

while couples lie in their beds like spoons,

while the rich are wondering what they wish

and single girls eat quiche.

Come to this wall that beats other walls:

Roman, Chinese, whose worn-down, false

molars envy steel fangs that flash,

scrubbed of thy neighbor’s flesh.

A bird may twitter a better song.

But should you consider abortion wrong

or that the quacks ask too high a fee,

come to this wall, and see.

At sunset, when the paralyzed street gives up

hope of hearing an ambulance, finally settling for

strolling Chinamen, while the elms imitate a map

of a khaki-clad country that lulls its foe,

life is gradually getting myopic, spliced,

aquiline, geometrical, free of gloss

or detail — be it cornices, doorknobs, Christ —

stressing silhouettes: chimneys, rooftops, a cross.

And your closing the shutters unleashes the domino

theory; for no matter what size a lump

melts in your throat, the future snowballs each «no»

to coin a profile by the burning lamp.

Neither because there is a lot of guilt

nor because local prices are somewhat steep,

nobody picks this brick pocket filled

with change that barely buys some sleep.

A hotel in whose ledgers departures

are more prominent than arrivals.

With wet Koh-i-noors the October rain

strokes what’s left of the naked brain.

In this country laid flat for the sake of rivers,

beer smells of Germany and seagulls are

in the air like a page’s soiled corners.

Morning enters the premises with a coroner’s

punctuality, puts its ear

to the ribs of a cold radiator, detects sub-zero:

the afterlife has to start somewhere.

Correspondingly, the angelic curls

grow more blond, the skin gains its distant, lordly

white, while the bedding already coils

desperately in the basement laundry.

Something like a field in Hungary, but without

its innocence. Something like a long river, short

of its bridges. Above, an unutterable umlaut

of eyes staining the view with hurt.

A posthumous vista where words belong

to their echo much more than to what one says.

An angel resembles in the clouds a blond

gone in an Auschwitz of sidewalk sales.

And a stone marks the ground where a sparrow sat.

In shop windows, the palms of the quay foretell

to a mosquito challenging the facade

of a villa — or, better yet, hotel —

his flat future. The farther one goes, the less

one is interested in the terrain.

An aimless iceberg resents bad press:

it suffers a meltdown, and forms a brain.

As though the mercury’s under its tongue, it won’t

talk. As though with the mercury in its sphincter,

immobile, by a leaf-coated pond

a statue stands white like a blight of winter.

After such snow, there is nothing indeed: the ins

and outs of centuries, pestered heather.

That’s what coming lull circle means —

when your countenance starts to resemble weather,

when Pygmalion’s vanished. And you are free

to cloud your folds, to bare the navel.

Future at last! That is, bleached debris

of a glacier amid the five-lettered «never».

Hence the routine of a goddess, nee

alabaster, that lets roving pupils gorge on

the heart of the color and temperature of the knee.

That’s what it looks like inside a virgin.

Citizen, enemy, mama’s boy, sucker, utter

garbage, panhandler, swine, refujew, verrucht;

a scalp so often scalded with boiling water

that the puny brain feels completely cooked.

Yes, we have dwelt here: in this concrete, brick, wooden

rubble which you now arrive to sift.

All our wires were crossed, barbed, tangled, or interwoven.

Also: we didn’t love our women, but they conceived.

Sharp is the sound of the pickax that hurts dead iron;

still, it’s gentler than what we’ve been told or have said ourselves.

Stranger! move carefully through our carrion:

what seems carrion to you is freedom to our cells.

Leave our names alone. Don’t reconstruct those vowels,

consonants, and so forth: they won’t resemble larks

but a demented bloodhound whose maw devours

its own traces, feces, and barks, and barks.

Darling, you think it’s love, it’s just a midnight journey.

Best are the dales and rivers removed by force,

as from the next compartment throttles «Oh, stop it, Bernie»,

yet the rhythm of those paroxysms is exactly yours.

Hook to the meat! Brush to the red-brick dentures,

alias cigars, smokeless like a driven nail!

Here the works are fewer than monkey wrenches,

and the phones are whining, dwarfed by to-no-avail.

Bark, then, with joy at Clancy, Fitzgibbon, Miller.

Dogs and block letters care how misfortune spells.

Still, you can tell yourself in the John by the spat-at mirror,

slamming the flush and emerging with clean lapels.

Only the liquid furniture cradles the dwindling figure.

Man shouldn’t grow in size once he’s been portrayed.

Look: what’s been left behind is about as meager

as what remains ahead. Hence the horizon’s blade.

«Birds flying high above the retreating army!

Why do you suddenly turn and head toward our enemy,

contrary to the clouds? We are not yet defeated, are we?

True, we are scattered, but we still have some energy».

«Because your numbers diminish. You are less fit to listen

to our songs. You are no more an audience.

Vultures swoop in to replace us, and Valkyries. And the eastern

wind slams the fir horizons like jagged accordions».

«Cuneiform of the beaks! Explosions that sprout a palm tree!

Your tunes will be blown out of the sky, too, by the screaming westerly.

We commit them to memory, which is a larger country.

Nobody knows the future, but there is always yesterday».

«Ye-ah! but our life span’s shorter. There is no tomb or pyre

for our kind, but chamomile, clover, chicory,

thyme. Your valedictory runs ‘Fire! fire! fire!’

We are less comprehensible. That’s why we need a victory».

Here’s a girl from a dangerous town.

She crops her dark hair short

so that less of her has to frown

when someone gets hurt.

She folds her memories like a parachute.

Dropped, she collects the peat

and cooks her veggies at home: they shoot

here where they eat.

Ah, there’s more sky in these parts than, say,

ground. Hence her voice’s pitch,

and her stare stains your retina like a gray

bulb when you switch

hemispheres, and her knee length quilt

skirt’s cut to catch the squall.

I dream of her either loved or killed

because the town’s too small.

«Slave, come to my service!» «Yes, my master. Yes?»

«Quick, fetch my chariot, hitch up the horses: I’ll drive to the palace!»

«Drive to the palace, my master. Drive to the palace.

The King will be pleased to see you, he will be benevolent to you».

«No, slave. I won’t go to the palace!»

«Don’t, my master. Don’t go to the palace.

The King will send you on a faraway expedition,

down the unknown road, through hostile mountains;

day and night he will make you experience pain and hardship».

«Slave, come to my service!» «Yes, my master. Yes?»

«Fetch water, pour it over my hands: I am to eat my supper».

«Eat your supper, my master. Eat your supper.

Frequent meals gladden one’s heart. Man’s supper

is the supper of his god, and clean hands catch the eye of Shamash».

«No, slave. I won’t eat my supper!»

«Don’t eat your supper, master. Don’t eat your supper.

Drink and thirst, food and hunger

never leave man alone, let alone each other».

«Slave, come to my service!» «Yes, my master. Yes?»

«Quick, fetch my chariot, hitch up the horses: I’ll go for a ride in the country».

«Do that, my master. Do that. A carefree wanderer

always fills his belly, a stray dog always

finds a bone, a migrating swallow is especially skilled in nesting,

a wild donkey finds the grass in the driest desert».

«No, slave. I won’t go for a ride in the country».

«Don’t go, my master. Don’t bother.

The lot of a wanderer is always dicey.

A stray dog loses its teeth. The nest

of a migrating swallow gets buried in plaster.

Naked earth is a wild donkey’s bedding».

«Slave, come to my service!» «Yes, my master. Yes?»

«I feel like starting a family, like begetting children».

«Good thinking, my master. Start a family, start a family.

Who has children secures his name, repeated in posthumous prayers».

«No, slave. I won’t start a family, I won’t have children!»

«Don’t start it, my master. Don’t have them.

A family is like a broken door, its hinge is creaking.

Only a third of one’s children are healthy; two-thirds always sickly».

«So, should I start a family?» «Don’t start a family.

Who starts a family wastes his ancestral house».

«Slave, come to my service!» «Yes, my master. Yes?»

«I shall yield to my enemy; in the court, I’ll stay silent before my detractors».

«Right, my master, right. Yield to your enemy;

keep silence, my master, before your detractors».

«No, slave! I won’t be silent, and I won’t yield!»

«Don’t yield, my master, and don’t be silent.

Even if you don’t open your mouth at all

your enemies will be merciless and cruel to you, as well as numerous».

«Slave, come to my service!» «Yes, my master. Yes?»

«I feel like doing some evil, eh?»

«Do that, my master. By all means, do some evil.

For how otherwise can you stuff your belly?

How, without doing evil, can you dress yourself warmly?»

«No, slave. I shall do no evil!»

«Evildoers are either killed, or flayed alive and blinded,

or blinded and flayed alive and thrown into a dungeon».

«Slave, come to my service!» «Yes, my master. Yes?»

«I’ll fall in love with a woman». «Fall in love, my master. Fall in love!

Who falls in love with a woman forgets his griefs and sorrows».

«No, slave. I won’t fall in love with a woman!»

«Don’t love, my master. Don’t love.

Woman is a snare, a trap, a dark pit.

Woman is a sharp steel blade slitting man’s throat in darkness».

«Slave, come to my service!» «Yes, my master. Yes?»

«Quick, fetch water to wash my hands: I am to make an offering to my god».

«Make an offering, make an offering.

Who makes offerings to his god fills his heart with riches;

he feels generous, and his purse is open».

«No, slave. I won’t make an offering!»

«Rightly so, my master. Rightly so!

Can you really train your god to follow you like a doggy?

All the time he demands obedience, rituals, sacrifices!»

«Slave, come to my service!» «Yes, my master. Yes?»

«I’ll invest with the interest, I will loan for the interest».

«Yes, invest with the interest, make loans for the interest.

Who does so preserves his own; his profit, though, is enormous».

«No, slave, I won’t lend and I won’t invest!»

«Don’t invest, my master. Don’t lend.

To lend is like loving a woman; to receive, like siring bad children:

people always curse those whose grain they eat.

They’ll resent you or try to reduce your profit».

«Slave, come to my service!» «Yes, my master. Yes?»

«I shall do a good deed for my nation!»

«Very good, my master, very good. You do that!

Who does good deeds for his nation has his name in Marduk’s gold signet».

«No, slave. I won’t do a good deed for my nation».

«Don’t do that, my master. Don’t bother.

Get up and stroll across ancient ruins,

scan the skulls of simple folk and nobles:

which one of them was a villain, which one a benefactor?»

«Slave, come to my service!» «Yes, my master. Yes?»

«If all this is so, then what is good?»

«To have your neck broken and my neck broken,

to be thrown into a river — that’s what is good!

Who is so tall as to reach the heavens?

Who so broad as to embrace plains and mountains?»

«If that’s so, I should kill you, slave: I’d rather you go before me».

«And does my master believe that he can survive for three days without me?»

To say that he was unhappy is either to say too much

or too little: depending on who’s the audience.

Still, the smell he’d give off was a bit too odious,

and his canter was also quite hard to match.

He said, They meant just a monument, but something went astray:

the womb? the assembly line? the economy?

Or else, the war never happened, they befriended the enemy,

and he was left as it is, presumably to portray

Intransigence, Incompatibility — that sort of thing which proves

not so much one’s uniqueness or virtue, but probability.

For years, resembling a cloud, he wandered in olive groves,

marveling at one-leggedness, the mother of immobility.

Learned to lie to himself, and turned it into an art

for want of a better company, also to check his sanity.

And he died fairly young — because his animal part

turned out to be less durable than his humanity.

Playing chess on the oil tablecloth at Sparky’s

Café, with half & half for whites,

against your specter at noon, two flights

down from that mattress, and seven years later. Scarcely

a gambit, by any standard. The fan’s dust-plagued

shamrock still hums in your, window — seven

years later and pints of semen

under the bridge — apparently not unplugged.

What does it take to pledge allegiance

to another biography, ocean, creed?

The expiration date on the Indian Deed?

A pair of turtledoves, two young pigeons?

The Atlantic, whose long-brewed invasion looks,

on the beaches of Salisbury, self-defeating?

Or the town hall cupola, still breast-feeding

its pale, cloud-swaddled Lux?

I wish you were here, dear,

I wish you were here.

I wish you sat on the sofa

and I sat near.

The handkerchief could be yours,

the tear could be mine, chin-bound.

Though it could be, of course,

the other way around.

I wish you were here, dear,

I wish you were here.

I wish we were in my car,

and you’d shift the gear.

We’d find ourselves elsewhere,

on an unknown shore.

Or else we’d repair

to where we’ve been before.

I wish you were here, dear,

I wish you were here.

I wish I knew no astronomy

when stars appear,

when the moon skims the water

that sighs and shifts in its slumber.

I wish it were still a quarter

to dial your number.

I wish you were here, dear,

in this hemisphere,

as I sit on the porch

sipping a beer.

It’s evening, the sun is setting;

boys shout and gulls are crying.

What’s the point of forgetting

if it’s followed by dying?

The last twenty years were good for practically everybody

save the dead. But maybe for them as well.

Maybe the Almighty Himself has turned a bit bourgeois

and uses a credit card. For otherwise time’s passage

makes no sense. Hence memories, recollections,

values, deportment. One hopes one hasn’t

spent one’s mother or father or both, or a handful of friends entirely

as they cease to hound one’s dreams. One’s dreams,

unlike the city, become less populous

the older one gets. That’s why the eternal rest

cancels analysis. The last twenty years were good

for practically everybody and constituted

the afterlife for the dead. Its quality could be questioned

but not its duration. The dead, one assumes, would not

mind attaining a homeless status, and sleep in archways

or watch pregnant submarines returning

to their native pen after a worldwide journey

without destroying life on earth, without

even a proper flag to hoist.

«Why don’t we board a train and go off to Persia?

Persia doesn’t exist, obviously, but inertia

does. It’s a better vehicle than any old engine, Johnny,

and we may have a comfortable, an eventful journey».

«Why do you call me Johnny when you know I am Billy, Mary?

Perhaps because of inertia? It’s Johnny you want to marry,

not me. But he is not in Persia, he went off to Warsaw,

although after 1945 it’s a different city also».

«Of course, you are Billy, Billy; and I’m not Mary, either.

Actually, I am Suzy: you are welcome to check my Visa.

But let’s be Mary and Johnny, like in the Ark of Noah,

or nameless, the way we were when we were spermatozoa».

«Because there are but two sexes, there is a lot of nuance,

and history’s where our exes join kings and ruins.

When someone’s whereabouts become a mystery,

you should take the train of thought that goes to history».

«Ah, there is so much action! In history, willy-nilly,

Mary becomes just Suzy, and Johnny Billy,

B. C. becomes A. D., and Persia Warsaw.

For history breeds inertia, and vice versa».

«Ah, mixing inertia with history bespeaks individuality!

Mary, let’s take a chance, this father of causality:

let’s take the express to where folks live in utter penury

and where the reality quickly becomes a memory».

«Oh, he is my dear boy, my slowly peeled banana!»

«And she is my sweetheart filled with Tampax Americana!»

«The future arrives on time whistling Domine Gloria,

and we must take it eastward, where it’s always earlier».

«What is this place? It looks kind of raw.

The trees stand as if they are about to draw,

their rustle is so menacing. They, no doubt,

have seen too many movies — but were they dubbed?»

«I don’t mind the place, but who are these guys?

Is this their true appearance, or disguise?

They all sell shoelaces but wear no shoes.

Can we explain to them that we are not Jews?»

«I never knew that history is so much

inhabited and curious, and prone to touch.

Oh, do they have a leader? A shah? A khan?

Frankly, I regret I don’t have my gun».

«But I’ve read many people can’t wish the same

wish. Unless, of course, they are insane.

I think we are quite safe; they don’t want to kill,

though frankly I regret I am off the pill».

«Ah, this is the past, and it’s rather vast,

and in the land of the cause its effects go bust

or else get outnumbered in more ways than one:

we’ve brought them all the future, and we are left with none».

«One shouldn’t speak for others when things get tight.

You might not have the future, but I just might.

The future is derivative; they may crack skulls,

but because they’ve been so primitive, we’ve had Pascals».

«So it’s goodbye, dear Mary. Hope all goes well.

We’ll meet not in the future but, say, in hell».

«Oh, that would be nice, dear Johnny, that would be great.

But the afterlife in history occurs quite late».

Here they are, for all to see,

the fruits of complacency.

Beware of love, of A. D., B. C.,

and the travel agency.

A train may move fast, but time is slow.

History’s closer

to the Big Bang than to Roman law,

and you are the loser.

So, our advice to you is, Stay put

if you can help it.

Always be ready to say Kaput,

but wear a helmet.

Eighteen years I’ve spent in Manhattan.

The landlord was good, but he turned bad.

A scumbag, actually. Man, I hate him.

Money is green, but it flows like blood.

I guess I’ve got to move across the river.

New Jersey beckons with its sulphur glow.

Say, numbered years are a lesser evil.

Money is green, but it doesn’t grow.

I’ll take away my furniture, my old sofa.

But what should I do with my windows’ view?

I feel like I’ve been married to it, or something.

Money is green, but it makes you blue.

A body on the whole knows where it’s going.

I guess it’s one’s soul that makes one pray,

even though above it’s just a Boeing.

Money is green, and I am gray.

Here’s your mom, here’s your dad.

Welcome to being their flesh and blood.

Why do you look so sad?

Here’s your food, here’s your drink.

Also some thoughts, if you care to think.

Welcome to everything.

Here’s your practically clean slate.

Welcome to it, though it’s kind of late.

Welcome at any rate.

Here’s your paycheck, here’s your rent.

Money is nature’s fifth element.

Welcome to every cent.

Here’s your swarm and your huge beehive.

Welcome to the place with its roughly five

billion like you alive.

Welcome to the phone book that stars your name.

Digits are democracy’s secret aim.

Welcome to your claim to fame.

Here’s your marriage, and here’s divorce.

Now that’s the order you can’t reverse.

Welcome to it; up yours.

Here’s your blade, here’s your wrist.

Welcome to playing your own terrorist;

call it your Middle East.

Here’s your mirror, your dental gleam.

Here’s an octopus in your dream.

Why do you try to scream?

Here’s your corncob, your TV set.

Your candidate suffering an upset.

Welcome to what he said.

Here’s your porch, see the cars pass by.

Here’s your shitting dog’s guilty eye.

Welcome to its alibi.

Here are your cicadas, then a chickadee,

the bulb’s dry tear in your lemon tea.

Welcome to infinity.

Here are your pills on the plastic tray,

your disappointing, crisp X-ray.

You are welcome to pray.

Here’s your cemetery, a well-kept glen.

Welcome to a voice that says «Amen».

The end of the rope, old man.

Here’s your will, and here’s a few

takers. Here’s an empty pew.

Here’s life after you.

And here are your stars which appear still keen

on shining as though you had never been.

They might have a point, old bean.

Here’s your afterlife, with no trace

of you, especially of your face.

Welcome, and call it space.

Welcome to where one cannot breathe.

This way, space resembles what’s underneath,

and Saturn holds the wreath.

There is a meadow in Sweden

where I lie smitten,

eyes stained with clouds’

white ins and outs.

And about that meadow

roams my widow

plaiting a clover

wreath for her lover.

I took her in marriage

in a granite parish.

The snow lent her whiteness,

a pine was a witness.

She’d swim in the oval

lake whose opal

mirror, framed by bracken,

felt happy broken.

And at night the stubborn

sun of her auburn

hair shone from my pillow

at post and pillar.

Now in the distance

I hear her descant.

She sings «Blue Swallow»,

but I can’t follow.

The evening shadow

robs the meadow

of width and color.

It’s getting colder.

As I lie dying

here, I’m eyeing

stars. Here’s Venus;

no one between us.

Since mistakes are inevitable, I can easily be taken

for a man standing before you in this room filled

with yourselves. Yet in about one hour

this will be corrected, at your and at my expense,

and the place will be reclaimed by elemental particles

free from the rigidity of a particular human shape

or type of assembly. Some particles are still free. It’s not all dust.

So my unwillingness to admit it’s I

facing you now, or the other way around,

has less to do with my modesty or solipsism

than with my respect for the premises’ instant future,

for those aforementioned free-floating particles

settling upon the shining surface

of my brain. Inaccessible to a wet cloth eager to wipe them off.

The most interesting thing about emptiness

is that it is preceded by fullness.

The first to understand this were, I believe, the Greek

gods, whose forte indeed was absence.

Regard, then, yourselves as rehearsing perhaps for the divine encore,

with me playing obviously to the gallery.

We all act out of vanity. But I am in a hurry.

Once you know the future, you can make it come

earlier. The way it’s done by statues or by one’s furniture.

Self-effacement is not a virtue

but a necessity, recognized most often

toward evening. Though numerically it is easier

not to be me than not to be you. As the swan confessed

to the lake: I don’t like myself. But you are welcome to my reflection.

The country is so populous that polygamists and serial

killers get off scot-free and airplane crashes

are reported (usually on the evening news) only when they occur

in a wooded area — the difficulty of access

is most grievous if it’s tinged with feelings for the environment.

Theaters are packed, both stalls and stage.

An aria is never sung by a single tenor:

normally they use six at once, or one that’s as fat as six.

And the same goes for the government, whose offices stay lit up

through the night, working in shifts, like factories,

hostage to the census. Everything is pandemic.

What is loved by one is loved by many,

be it an athlete, a perfume, or bouillabaisse.

Therefore, no matter what you say or do is loyal.

Nature too seems to have taken note of the common denominator,

and whenever it rains, which is seldom, clouds linger longest over

not the army and navy stadium but the cemetery.

Give me another life, and I’ll be singing

in Caffè Rafaella. Or simply sitting

there. Or standing there, as furniture in the corner,

in case that life is a bit less generous than the former.

Yet partly because no century from now on will ever manage

without caffeine or jazz, I’ll sustain this damage,

and through my cracks and pores, varnish and dust all over,

observe you, in twenty years, in your full flower.

On the whole, bear in mind that I’ll be around. Or rather,

that an inanimate object might be your father,

especially if the objects are older than you, or larger.

So keep an eye on them always, for they no doubt will judge you.

Love those things anyway, encounter or no encounter.

Besides, you may still remember a silhouette, a contour,

while I’ll lose even that, along with the other luggage.

Hence, these somewhat wooden lines in our common language.

Dear savages, though I’ve never mastered your tongue, free of pronouns and gerunds,

I’ve learned to bake mackerel wrapped in palm leaves and favor raw turtle legs,

with their flavor of slowness. Gastronomically, I must admit, these years

since I was washed ashore here have been a non-stop journey,

and in the end I don’t know where I am. After all, one keeps carving notches only

so long as nobody apes one. While you started aping me even before I spotted

you. Look what you’ve done to the trees! Though it’s flattering to be regarded

even by you as a god, I, in turn, aped you somewhat, especially with your maidens

— in part to obscure the past, with its ill-fated ship, but also to cloud the future,

devoid of a pregnant sail. Islands are cruel enemies

of tenses, except for the present one. And shipwrecks are but flights from grammar

into pure causality. Look what life without mirrors does

to pronouns, not to mention one’s features! Perhaps your ancestors also

ended up on this wonderful beach in a fashion similar

to mine. Hence, your attitude toward me. In your eyes I am

at the very least an island within an island. And anyhow, watching my every step,

you know that I am not longing for the past participle or the past continuous

— well, not any more than for that future perfect of yours deep in some humid cave,

decked out in dry kelp and feathers. I write this with my index finger

on the wet, glassy sand at sunset, being inspired perhaps

by the view of the palm-tree tops splayed against the platinum sky like some

Chinese characters. Though I’ve never studied the language. Besides, the breeze

tousles them all too fast for one to make out the message.

In walks the Emperor, dressed as Mars;

his medals clink and sway.

The General Staff sports so many stars,

it looks like the Milky Way.

The Emperor says, «I guess you guess

what you are here for».

The generals rise and bark, «Oh yes,

Sire! To start a war».

«Right», says the Emperor. «Our enemy

is powerful, mean, and brash.

But we’ll administer him such an enema

his toilet won’t need a flush.

«Move your artillery! Move your warships!

Where is my gorgeous horse?

Forward! May God, whom our nation worships,

join our brave air force!»

«Yes!» cry the warriors. «Our job is carnage,

ruin, destruction, void.

We promise, Sire: we’ll find a Carthage

and we’ll leave it destroyed».

«Great!» cries the Emperor. «What one conquers

is up to the scholars’ quills.

And let the Treasury boys go bonkers

trying to pay the bills».

The generals thunder: «Well said, Sire.

Our coin is of tolling bells.

May the sun that won’t set over your empire

rise for nobody else!»

And off roars the turbine, off clangs the metal,

off they march, hand on hilt,

as many a rose curls its tender petal

ready to wait and wilt.

It’s no Armageddon, it’s not some smarmy

earthquake or H-bomb test.

No, it’s just the Imperial Army

trying to do its best.

The sky is falling, the earth is gaping,

the ocean simply boils.

«Life», says the Emperor, «is just aping

popular abstract oils».

«War», he continues, «is like a museum».

And the Top Brass agree:

«Sire, we’ll paint like that ad nauseam,

since Art equals History!

«History never says it’s sorry,

nor does it say, What if.

To enter History, a territory

first has to come to grief».

«History never says it’s sorry»,

join the enlisted men.

«Who needs memento when we’ve got mori?

History must know when».

«Ah, tell them to turn the good old horizon

vertical, save its sail»,

adds the Emperor, with his eyes on

the most minute detail.

«Yes», cry the generals. «Yes, for heaven’s

sake. That’s what’s been amiss.

Let’s push the button and see what happens.

This must be a masterpiece».

And lo, the world turns topsy-turvy,

in other words, goes bust.

«Gosh», says the Emperor. «That was nervy,

but, in the context, just».

Now there’s nothing around to argue

over: no pros or cons.

«Hey, enemy!» the Emperor shouts. «Are you

there?» — There’s no response.

Now it’s pure space, devoid of mountains,

plains, and their bric-a-brac.

«Let’s», says the Emperor, «sing our anthem’s

lyrics and raise the flag».

Up flies the pennant, attended only

by two or three evening bats.

«A victory often makes one lonely»,

the Emperor says, then adds:

«Let’s have a monument, since my stallion,

white as a hyacinth,

is old and looks, as it were, quite alien;

and write on the granite plinth:

«‘Tight was the enemy’s precious anus.

We, though, stood strong and firm.’

The critics might say that we went bananas.

But we’ve got it all on film.

«Lest her sweet mutants still cry, the mother

may sing them the ancient lay.

The future as such has no purpose, other

than pushing down Replay».

At sunset, everything looks quite pretty.

Down goes the temperature.

The world lies motionless, like a treaty

without a signature.

The stars start to twinkle, remote and jolly.

The eye travels rather far.

One feels a little bit melancholy.

But there is one’s cigar.

Praised be the climate

for putting a limit,

after a fashion,

to time in motion.

Of all prisons

the Four Seasons

has the best diet

and welcomes riot.

Asked for its origin

a climate cites oxygen,

but gives no reasons

for its omnipresence.

Detached like Confucius,

hardly conscious,

it may not love us,

but murmurs, «Always».

Being finite,

we certainly find it

promising and heartwarming,

though it’s a warning.

A climate’s permanence

is caused by the prevalence

of nothingness in its texture

and atmospheric pressure.

Hence, the barometer,

with its Byronic air,

should be, I reckon,

our only icon.

Since the accuracy of mercury

beats that of memory

(which is also mortal),

climate is moral.

When it exhibits

its bad habits,

it blames not parents

but ocean currents.

Or charged with the tedium

and meaninglessness of its idiom,

it won’t seek legal

aid and goes local.

Keen on history,

it’s also well versed in the mystery

of the hereafter

and looks like their author.

What I have in common

with the ancient Roman

is not a Caesar,

but the weather.

Likewise, the main features

I share with the future’s

mutants are those curious

shapes of cumulus.

Praised be the entity

incapable of enmity

and likewise finicky

when it comes to affinity.

Yet if one aspect

of this highly abstract

thing is its gratitude

for finding latitude,

then a rational anthem

sung by one atom

to the rest of matter

should please the latter.

Whether you fished me bravely out of the Pacific

or I pried your shell wide open by the Atlantic

now matters little. A different kind of ocean

erodes nowadays what seemed fairly rocky

and presumably insinuates itself

into your hairdo as well — obliterating

as much as conquering. And, as the poet said,

thou art far in humanity, what with your offspring now

breaking new hearts and balls across this continent,

which is what, I hope, we still have in common.

Still, they are only half you. In a court of law

the inheritance of your mesmerizing beauty

that I thought immortal will be awarded

to nobody, including yourself. For although the gods or genes

are generous lending their properties — say, for a trial run

in these precincts — ultimately they are selfish;

at any rate, they are more vain than you,

having eternity. Which is a far cry from

yet another rented abode in a snowbound village

somewhere up north, where perhaps at this

very moment you stare at your flimsy mirror

returning you surely less than my equally one-dimensional

memory, though to you this makes indeed no difference.

In march the soldiers

with rifles on their shoulders.

Out run through brambles

the locals with their bundles.

Off fly the envoys

contemplating new ways

of creating symmetry

in a future cemetery.

Up go the pundits

explicating bandits.

Clearly outworded,

down go the murdered.

The expensive warriors,

sailing by on carriers

flying Old Glory,

signal hunky-dory.

Far is the neighbor,

loveless or unable,

neutral or bullied.

Near is a bullet.

Deep dig new hermits

sporting blue helmets.

Reasonable offers

manufacture orphans.

Blood as a liquid

shows no spilling limit;

one might build finally

here a refinery.

Home stay the virtuous

with their right to watch this

live, while they are dining:

it’s a mealtime dying.

Soiled turns the fabric

of the great republic.

Ethics by a ballot

is what it’s all about.

Mourn the slaughtered.

Pray for those squatted

in some concrete lair

facing betrayal.

If you were drowning, I’d come to the rescue,

wrap you in my blanket and pour hot tea.

If I were a sheriff, I’d arrest you

and keep you in a cell under lock and key.

If you were a bird, I’d cut a record

and listen all night long to your high-pitched trill.

If I were a sergeant, you’d be my recruit,

and boy, I can assure you, you’d love the drill.

If you were Chinese, I’d learn the language,

burn a lot of incense, wear funny clothes.

If you were a mirror, I’d storm the Ladies’,

give you my red lipstick, and puff your nose.

If you loved volcanoes, I’d be lava,

relentlessly erupting from my hidden source.

And if you were my wife, I’d be your lover,

because the Church is firmly against divorce.

You’ll outlast me, good old concrete,

as I’ve outlasted, it seems, some men

who had taken me, too, for a kind of street,

citing color of eyes, or mien.

So I praise your inanimate, porous looks

not out of envy but as the next

of kin — less durable, plagued with loose

joints, though still grateful to the architects.

I applaud your humble — to be exact,

meaningless — origins, roar and screech,

fully matched, however, by the abstract

destination, beyond my reach.

It’s not that nothing begets its kind

but that the future prefers to court

a date that’s resolutely blind

and wrapped in a petrified long skirt.

The perishable devours the perishable in broad daylight,

moribund in its turn in late November:

the seagulls, trashing the dump, are trying to outnumber

the snow, or have it at least delayed.

The reckless primordial alphabet, savaging every which

way the oxygen wall, constitutes a preface

to the anarchy of the refuse:

in the beginning, there was a screech.

In their stammering Ws one reads not hunger but

the prurience of comma-sharp talons toward

what outlasts them, or else a torn-out

page’s flight from the volume’s fat,

while some mad anemometer giddily spins its cups

like a haywire tea ceremony, and the Atlantic

is breasting grimly with its athletic

swells the darkening overcast.

Ultimately, there should be a language

in which the word «egg» is reduced to O

entirely. The Italian comes the closest,

naturally, with its uova. That’s why Alighieri thought

it the healthiest food, sharing the predilection

with sopranos and tenors whose pear-like torsos

in the final analysis embody «opera».

The same pertains to the truly Romantic, that is,

German poets, with practically every line

starting the way they’d begin a breakfast,

or to the equally cocky mathematicians

brooding over their regularly laid infinity,

whose immaculate zeros won’t ever hatch.

Birds acquaint themselves with leaves.

Hired hands roll up their sleeves.

In a brick malodorous dorm

boys awake awash in sperm.

Clouds of patently absurd

but endearing shapes assert

the resemblance of their lot

to a cumulative thought.

As the sun displays its badge

to the guilty world at large,

scruffy masses have to rise,

unless ordered otherwise.

Now let’s see what one can’t see

elsewhere in the galaxy:

life on earth, of which its press

makes a lot and comets less.

As a picture doomed to sneak

previews only, it’s unique

even though some action must

leave its audience aghast.

Still, the surplus of the blue

up on high supplies a clue

as to why our moral laws

won’t receive their due applause.

What we used to blame on gods

now gets chalked up to the odds

of small particles whose sum

makes you miss the older sham.

Yet regardless of the cause,

or effects that make one pause,

one is glad that one has been

caught this morning in between.

Painted by a gentle dawn

one is proud that like one’s own

planet now one will not wince

at what one is facing, since

putting up with nothing whose

company we cannot lose

hardens rocks and — rather fast —

hearts as well. But rocks will last.

The perilous yellow sun follows with its slant eyes

masts of the shuddered grove steaming up to capsize

in the frozen straits of Epiphany. February has fewer

days than the other months; therefore, it’s more cruel

than the rest. Dearest, it’s more sound

to wrap up our sailing round

the globe with habitual naval grace,

moving your cot to the fireplace

where our dreadnought is going under

in great smoke. Only fire can grasp a winter!

Golden unharnessed stallions in the chimney

dye their manes to more corvine shades as they near the finish,

and the dark room fills with the plaintive, incessant chirring

of a naked, lounging grasshopper one cannot cup in fingers.

It’s not that the Muse feels like clamming up,

it’s more like high time for the lad’s last nap.

And the scarf-waving lass who wished him the best

drives a steamroller across his chest.

And the words won’t rise either like that rod

or like logs to rejoin their old grove’s sweet rot,

and, like eggs in the frying pan, the face

spills its eyes all over the pillowcase.

Are you warm tonight under those six veils

in that basin of yours whose strung bottom wails;

where like fish that gasp at the foreign blue

my raw lip was catching what then meant you?

I would have hare’s ears sewn to my bald head,

in thick woods for your sake I’d gulp drops of lead,

and from black gnarled snags in the oil-smooth pond

I’d bob up to your face as some Tirpitz won’t.

But it’s not on the cards or the waiter’s tray,

and it pains to say where one’s hair turns gray.

There are more blue veins than the blood to swell

their dried web, let alone some remote brain cell.

We are parting for good, little friend, that’s that.

Draw an empty circle on your yellow pad.

This will be me: no insides in thrall.

Stare at it a while, then erase the scrawl.

About a year has passed. I’ve returned to the place of battle,

to its birds that have learned their unfolding of wings from a subtle

lift of a surprised eyebrow, or perhaps from a razor blade

— wings, now the shade of early twilight, now of stale bad blood.

Now the place is abuzz with trading in your ankles’ remnants, bronzes

of sunburnt breastplates, dying laughter, bruises,

rumors of fresh reserves, memories of high treason,

laundered banners with imprints of the many who since have risen.

All’s overgrown with people. A ruin’s a rather stubborn

architectural style. And the heart’s distinction from a pitch-black cavern

isn’t that great; not great enough to fear

that we may collide again like blind eggs somewhere.

At sunrise, when nobody stares at one’s face, I often

set out on foot to a monument cast in molten

lengthy bad dreams. And it says on the plinth «Commander

in chief». But it reads «in grief», or «in brief», or «in going under».