The Voice Over

III

Spolia

Poems

Spolia (2014)

War of the Beasts and the Animals (2015)

Essays (2014–2016)

Today Before Yesterday (excerpt)

After the Dead Water

Intending to Live

At the Door of a Notnew Age

SPOLIA

TRANSLATED BY SASHA DUGDALE

for my father

totted up

what was said

amounted to

she simply isn’t able to speak for herself

and so she always uses rhyme in her poems

ersatz and out of date poetic forms

her material

offers no resistance

its kiss is loveless, it lies motionless

she’s the sort you’d lift onto a chair

read us the poem about wandering lonely

she’s the sort who once made a good soviet translator

careful unadventurous

where is her I place it in the dish

why on earth does she speak in voices

(voices “she has adopted,” in quote marks:

obvs anyone-without-an-I cannot adopt anything

for anyone-without-an-I will wander, begging alms

pretending to be a corner, a jar of mayonnaise, a cat

although no one believes him quite)

I’m a bagel I’m a bagel says the speaker-without-an-I.

some people are stuffed with soft cheese but oh no not me

some people are engorged with character and culture

potato scones, hot stones,

I’ve got the biggest hole empty yawning

I’m the earth I send my cosmonauts floating

the mouths of my eaters, the teeth of my tenants,

converging from the east and the south,

they take a last chew swallow

when a quick nought has licked up the last crumb

fire’s sharp tongue will scour the granaries—

I won’t even remain as air, shifting

refracting sound

fading with the light on the river’s ripple

sucking the milk and vodka from still-moist lips

anyone-without-an-I

is permitted a non-i-ppearance

wants libert-i

——

Tramcar, tramcar, squat and wide!

Pushkin pops his clogs inside!

Dingle-dangle Pushkin-Schmushkin

Dying cloudberries in the bushkin

Demigod  theomorph

Dig the burning peaty turf

Innokenty Annensky

Stuck between heresky and theresky

Is feeling miserably empty

At the station in Tsarskoselsky

All the hungry passengers

Waiting in the railway shack

Say Look! A Bone is stuck in your Throat!

But the bone is red-lipped gabriak.

No I won’t be your good boy,

The teenage poet blurts—

Voloshin can have his way with them

Stick his fingers up their skirts,

Crimean wine, bearded philanderer …

Now Blok appears—is gone again

Under the sun of Alexander

Polyakov picks up the reins.

Ancient Scythian stone women

Glow as they crumble

Instagram posts for Soviet airmen,

Seizing wheat ears as they scramble

Now fire the search engine!

Fix eyepiece on the earth’s sphere!

Glazova and Barskova

Are coming over loud and clear.

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe

All the poets were full of woe

And nobody knew what to do.

Dying, like clearing out a room

Without making a fuss

Resurrection, if and when

——

visible delicate

invisible inviolate

nearest dearest

souring, steeping

delayed en route

root of the

wormwood

clamped

in the teeth

wordeed

wordtree

word wood

beasting

the unbested

suspended, resisted

put by in secrets

halfcracked  halfvolk

——

let her come out herself and say something

(and we’ll listen to you)

she won’t come out

it won’t come right

speaks from the heart

(tchaikovsky! let me die but first)

but she says it like she doesn’t mean it

it even seems like her words

might have come from someone else

always over-stylizing

like she’s dressing a corpse

where’s her inimitable intonation

the breath catching in her throat

that individual stamp

recognizable from a single note

(the work of an engineer and not of a poet)

(not lyrics, mechanics—

signs not of a lady but of a mechanic)

and these projects all the time

as if the cold sweat of inspiration

on her forehead never made her hair stand on

enough, I said, I’m prigov

you prigs can fuck off

——

when blossoms tum-ti-tum

for the last time the blossom

in the dooryard bloomed

the lilac in the dooryard bloomed

and stars that shoot along the sky

not yet will measureless fields be green

and dancing by the light of the moon

  the light of the moon

and after april when may follows

banquet halls up yards and bunting-dressed

and breasts stuck white with wreath and spray

marked off the girls unreally from the rest

who lined the sidings grimly gay

(she loves embedding quotes because

she can’t be without love)

washed by the rivers blest by the suns of home

my land, I love your vast expanses!

your steppe & coachmen, costumed dances!

your peddlers of mystic trances!

and murdered tsar nicholas

oh, and kitezh’s watery kingdom

and how above our golden freedom

rises gloom dusk cumulus

how early that star drooped in the chilled western air

I’ll remember may the first and the scent of your hair

when for the last time

when we saw

last one to the gate is a rotten egg

and they run and run

——

and so I decided

I was told

curly feathers of metro marble

milk white enamel girls

in gilded kazakh skull caps

and children with gently determined faces

you, blue-eyed aeronauts and machine gunners

saboteurs, cavalrymen and tank drivers

fringe-finned guardsmen, officers

platforms of shaggy crouching partisans

and especially the border guard’s alsatian

plum blossom in a golden bowl

early morning crimea

ballerina winding herself widdershins

apollo in singlet and hockey shorts

alabaster profile on wedgwood medallion

clearly sketched in a golden oval

aeroplane wreathing omens in the clouds

hercules, given to omphale

you must have forgotten

in the passageway leading to the circle line

——

Do you remember, Maria

our twilit corridor

nineteen-forties Russia

a settlement, post war

dances to the radiogram

twostep at arm’s length

freight trains loaded

with gold and frankincense

those hard done hard won

those barely alive

down on your bare knees

a head against your thigh

tea twinkles in the strainer

steams in the room

bulbous iron knobs

where a cheap dress is thrown

remember how she stood

weeping on the porch

when they hunted him down

caught him in the church

smiling, he was led

looked back as if to say

then a round in the head

and a truck sped away

at the crack of fire

you turned and left

and cranked up your life

and lived it cleft.

——

my brother said you’re a fascist

you sing up, and I’ll sing loud

we’ll be back when the trees are in leaf

but I’ll stand my ground

when the leaves are in fist

and the deer dances past the oak

the antifascist flips to fascist

and the wood goes for broke

words are attached to things

with old twine

and people lay down with their tubers

in the ground for all time

but them, they cross yards

with lists and chalk

and lick the paint off window sills

with tongues that fork

fascist fattish fetish

flatfish, flippery, facetious

but the air knows we’re not of them,

none of you or us

untie the words

let them drop in a corner

and the wood will call back its men

non omnis moriar.

——

across the vast rippling sound

under the evening star

from the furthest shore

floated a wooden box

you couldn’t hear any captain aboard

you couldn’t see any sailors

all you could see  a faint flickering light

(it floats closer to our home)

all you could hear  a faint scratching

as if something was awake in the case but crumbling

shifting handful by handful

all you could hear  the dripping and crackling of wax

and water psalm by psalm

read then washed away

then read and washed away

forgive me forgive me my friend

let me perish

it isn’t about that

don’t run along the shore after me

along a path that doesn’t exist

legs collapsing under you

don’t look for my wooden box

bobbing in the shallows

caught in the reeds

and most of all: don’t take off the lid

turn your back on the old world

don’t take off my lid

don’t go back to mother

don’t wander the villages speaking

from lips chalky white petrified

dear comrades brothers and sisters we happy few

——

depart from me for I am a sinful man

said the eagle to the headwind

depart from me for I am an infirm man

said the red clay to the hands

depart from me

I am not man at all

I am a recording device

trrrrrr chirr churr

bring a jug bring a jug

——

and snow fell, and it was kind of:

the azure light disappeared like a cataract

——

under the spindle of a low sky

a dust trail on the near shore

two cars, a jawa motorbike

a woman in a scarf, her face hidden

the young are beautiful, the old are more so

a shop without a signboard

loaves of bread on the shelf

in rows like soldiers on parade

still warm to the touch

each loaf reluctantly cooling

by the factory gates

a briar rose in raspberry cuffs

points in its madness

to where the sickening smell comes from

where did you get to, mr speaker

from the regional office

how long, my dear

have we been traveling

over this bridge in our little car

will we ever leave this place

——

the high towers are lit up red

and on them tall flags are talking

in the skies the stars assemble in rows

and jet planes, rising

tanks on parade with heavy paunches

armoured chariots

dolphin-heroes

swallow-martyrs

lions picked for their stature, their roar

people people and people

above them floats apple blossom

scented buds of white acacia

crinkle-edged paper poppies

heads

on poles

——

apparition of these faces in the metro

lamps on a wet black wire

——

Instead of scribbles in soft pencil lead:

Spinnrade  the brook  the mill weir,

You find the homunculus stone dead

His fetal hands pressed to his ears,

And guards to the left and the right of the door

And the party spirit in proletarian literature

You’ll stand in the entrance hall to read your verse

The stitches drawn so tight you’ll forget all the words.

—

Plush Soviet rose

Drilling the briar shoot

But the shoot sows

Itself silently, hides deep among the roots

You beat to death those without babble

And honour those without grace

But if you look with a gaze that is level

The spines have grown on your face.

—

See how Pushkin’s cobbler

Measures the foot with a sole

The litigant follows his example

And the author is tied to a pole.

But it’s Pushkin’s miller!

The auditorium is slowly filling

A re-educated pine tall as a pillar

Stretches  confesses it was once a willow

——

…. …… .

——

and so I decided

it was told to me that I should think back

so I thought back

and remembered

and it upset me

so I went and died

I died

and nothing came of it

apart from books

which came at some point

after fifty years

and former men

lost the form they once had

——

tell her to come out and say something

(coo-ey! calls war)

and the dog-heart growls and shrinks

and the son is born on the barracks floor

two friends lived like ya and you

and if one of them said yes

the underground water rose in the darkness

I’ll sing of that soon

no says the other

no and that is an end

there are no children in the army

which is made up of many men

but the friends could say nothing

when I sprang forth

between tree bole and gun bore

my cradle was caught

——

before the great war the apples were so fine

you might have heard that once at market—but who’s left alive

——

click

trigger (shutter) cocked

chink  viewfinder  sight

the photographer takes the picture

(things are taken from their places)

trans-ferr-al

and trans-ition trans-lates the space anew

(where corpses lie alongside the quick)

trans-humans transhumance

ex-isled con-sumers

jesters creatives

students

peasants

(great-grandfather grigory with his two hands

factory machine will chew off the right hand, but later,

great-grandfather whose face I never saw)

gawpers and gazers, proceeding arm-in-arm

and jews unassigned scattered

(we-jews)

o what bewildering confusion

from wild profusion

click

springtime, green garden, maytime

brooch at her throat, hair gathered in a bun

my grandmother (only a little older than me)

feeding a squirrel in a park on the outskirts of moscow

lonely soldier drinking mineral with syrup

school uniform, fitting room, apron-winged, unhemmed

festive streets, the houses and pavements illuminated in tiny lights

five-year-old mother flicks her silken ribbon

looks

click

click

wide-hipped rowing boats drawn up on the shore

their hulls bright in the sun

gondola swings flying over the abyss

a gypsy camp by the roadside, surly children in headscarves

home for former revolutionaries, two old ladies on a bench

(one is mine)

crimea, nineteen thirty eight, cascades of bathing beauties

(which one’s you)

croquet on the dacha lawn, moscow region

twenty years later in forty three

siberia, in evacuation

a headless cockerel and it swooped dead through the yard

head lying in the grass

and all the radio stations of the soviet union are speaking

accountant overwhelmed by numbers

nurse  (made it to berlin)

seventeen-year-old nanny

shoeshiner from the next stairwell

geologist recently released from his second sentence

gynecologist

lecturer at the institute of architecture

vasya (who?) from solyanka street

woman from local health inspectorate

twenty-year-old lyodik killed in action

his father, a volunteer, bombed troop train

his mother who lived right up until death

a little girl who will remember all this

relatives from saratov and leningrad

inhabitants of khabarovsk and gorky

and those I have forgotten

and pushkin pushkin of course

everyone round a laden table

ninth of may victory celebration

windows thrown back radio on

victoria herself sitting at the table

singing the blue scarf song singing schubert

as if there were no death

——

so what bounds Russia, said the crippled man

you know very well what bounds it, said the crippled man

and every span of her earth

and every step in her dust

is a step towards border control

across no man’s land

and the sky drawn up close

all the better to gape

oh this place, place, where boundaries are everywhere

everywhere junctions connections between this world and that

every passing on walkways and subways

and the border-guard peering into the still-open mouth

holes and dugouts and pores

through the skin of the country, these doors

through which passers-by

may not descend unauthorized

not a tear duct, nor a shallow well

but a mine in every hole

a deep long shaft

to where the canary me is held aloft

——

I teach straying from I, yet who can stray from me!

this I follows you from here until the hour of death

throbs in your ears till you say “here I stands”

I do not say these things for a ruble or to fill up the time while I wait for a boat

(it is you talking, not I—I is your native tongue

tied in your mouth, in mine it began to wag)

while we sleep, I thinks about you

——

suburbangascompressionworks where the unstable sublimated mass

rises paraglides over paradise or over gas

the compressed is overgrown, but peonies grow abundant as the plucked

——

it is time to explain myself—let us stand up

earth cannot stand

she has no close or distant plans

no sense of her own rightness

she doesn’t pity herself doesn’t answer in answer to

doesn’t lie down doesn’t run

makes no particular mistakes

leaves no person without

earth opens her mouth but not to speak

nor does she stop herself being mired in herself

——

the intricate carved doors of the butterfly

don’t flap forwards backwards so you

can pull your heart from its cavity

and peer on tiptoes over the garden wall

the suite of rooms won’t sway or come apart,

nor will the mezzanine bend and snap

at last vision runs from the garden

says to reason: enough of your crap

and now in the whitest nights—

when light hardly catches its own—

our trial opens in court and takes flight

and marrow courses and teems in the bone

the prosecutor mops his damp brow

pours a thick glass with a hand that shakes

so water scatters in beads on the cloth

a tiny map of the italian lakes

bone marrow, like porridge left overnight,

suddenly singing in full throat

a song of an old life, our old life,

but no more now than a flat joke

as if we weren’t sawdust-stuffed, soap slivers,

splinters of worlds thrown into a pail

and the thick-lipped beer bottles

trumpeted our way

——

transparent pine legs flicker past

like a shadowy borodino battle

moscow like a played draught

slips out of reach  its draw is lateral

there: inseparable, clustered like grapes,

foaming goblets of lilac in the dark

caught in the thin smoke from war medals

mid-bloom, outwinging firework

not holy mother of god! not a dungeon!

but darkling glass in the entrance halls

v-sign smeared on the walls.

but I awoke and went  awol!

I saw the skull beneath the skin

its sockets its machined teeth its seam

not a bonnet but a bauble

the night sickblossom of a bluebottle crown

trotting like guinea hens, zulfiya

zemfira, maria and russIa

run like ink across the meadow

into the open maw of a severed head

roost on the perch in the mouth’s red hollow

but I awoke before we were swallowed

——

the watery world is boiling and burning

its motors begin dully moving and turning

and dust in damp little scrupuli

coats the horse’s muzzle and eye

who rides so late through standing water

it is the father, he holds his daughter

the cart rattles and clatters and shakes

but the child never wakes

hush now child don’t be frightened

the sedge has withered from the lake

the heron calls, the stork has quietened

we’ll get there in the time it takes

languor on the bosom, warm in the womb

trembling like water in a manger

tell the child that dawn has come

now the child’s beyond danger

but deep in the rock where the sediment’s hard

the underground water is born in the dark

and rises up the dungeon stairs

slowly up the legs of chairs

——

summarised

what was said

amounted to

she simply isn’t able to speak for herself

so she is always ruled by others

because her history repeats and repeats itself

takes on ersatz and out of date date forms

and there is no knowing where her quotes are from

nineteen thirty or nineteen seventy

they’re all in there  pell-mell  all at once

not to remind us, you understand, just to plug the holes

(appalling really)

her raw material

her diamonds her dust tracks her dirt-coloured trailers

ancient forests mountain ranges

snow leopards desert roses gas flow

needed for global trade arrangements

her raw material doesn’t want to do business with her

gives itself up without love will do as she wants

unclear what she needs

where’s your I, where is it hidden?

why do strangers speak for you

or are you speaking

in the voices of scolds and cowards

get out of yourself

put that dictionary back on the shelf

she won’t come out

it won’t come right

look how ferry fleet she is

see her wings in aeroplansion

woolscouring steelbeating pasteurizing

thousand-eyed thousand-bricked civic expansion

weavers singing at their non-functioning looms

voluntary wine-drinking zones

supre (forgive my french) matists striding forth

junckerlords kalashnikovs

bolshoiballet dancing out from behind the fire curtain

the fenced-in ghost of a murdered orchard

this[fucking]country

paradise sleeping in hell’s embrace

——

let her stay like that, in bloom

I’ll take my stand here

with the brief falling petals

with the night sentry

prostitutes pale shadows

under the shadows of trees on the arterial road

blinded by headlamps

approach the cars

careful like deer to the feeder

wagon-restaurant  plastic flowers

menu in gilded letters on leatherette

waitress with bitemarks on her neck

anyone who speaks as I can’t yet speak

dust storm at the railway halt

where on another day we could have lit up a cigarette

the expanse of fields, rain-moist and restless

a retired officer in a military coat

a truck driver in his lit cabin, now we can see

whether it’s high-walled like a palace’s eaves

and whether light will dispel darkness between two tiny towns.

place your hand on my I and I will give way to desire

June 2014