Total Jazz

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â ïåðåâîäå íà àíãëèéñêèé ÿçûê

Eclogues

I

I’m here. And the train is clattering.
Behind the lacy curtain the moon flashes
on and off. In order to see it you might
destroy the wood that’s on the right.
But it’s in force of only two: Satan and God.
And the latter seems to chill out.
It’s Friday. The verses I read
are not to change the reasons
and the consequences.
And what is much more interesting
they’re not to change my own self.
Appearing ghostlike sort of tune,
the bugs on paper
and the rabid warrant of the common naught.
But train is moving,
or it is me moving on the train,
while it stands still.
Oh, do not bother asking the spring to respond.
The day is killed
by sitting on the lower seat.
And screw the distance and the days.
The smithereens of twilight
and the stars
fly by and turn into the fires.
The moon’s performing common dance
in the wet sky,
is flashing past the window –
a shining firefly.
And I don’t understand so far
what is the use of the things I am common with.
The phrase sticking in throat.
Everything’s useless.
There are no nights,
no days, no evenings and no train,
no woods, no fields,
no splendid, commonly languid, eyes
of yours with morning on them.
Nothing is kept and all in vain,
and I am writing one last time
to you. I forgive everything.
May you also forgive.
But it’s impossible to forgive all of it,
for everything – the train, the moon,
the stewardess with the tea –
are no more than a torn thread now,
that used to bound you and me,
and once been tensioned,
went pop in the silence.
And now there is no you, no me...
Only the train’s traveling to Kaluga,
but heart says, cries out: keep on writing!

22:00, 06.03.15

II

On upper seat there is a recruit.
Quietly sleeping. But does he exist?
Or is it the devil
who once taught me to read and chirrup
in the drinkeries?
Over the dirt, the drafts,
over the lanes
my damned ink flows.
What is the life? – The paper for the ink!
Yesterday you shed tears within your dream,
and I awoke and howled as a beast.
What is the use?
The life’s the paper for the ink.
Do comprehend, there are no more to be:
no breakups, no meetups, no promises,
no torments – secret or flat-out,
and no fire
of the jealousy.
There is no more neither you
and nor me.

22:20, 06.03.15

III

The soldier dreamt of sarafans.
He saw himself a general.
Makarov gun in hand
and the command in head.
Who’s the authority for him within his dream?
He made what he wanted.
And time ran out.
He killed, he shot around
and then asked wearily:
– How many did I kill?
And time? It ran out,
as it ain’t within the graves.
But drifting off to sleep
he kept in mind
someone from on the lower seat.
Do comprehend!
I used to love you,
you loved me,
but the mirage melted.
And I again do break the pencil.
But what are the words of the poet to you? –
a shallow whim, an obsession, a habit –
the one you shouldn’t take for real?
I write to you. So what? The quote!
The history’s intolerant to tears.
And who we were
may show the time,
that’s lost in that very river for keeps.
I’m on my way to the next town and the next bar,
in which I’ll read out loud my verses on my knees.

22:52, 06.03.15

IV

The angels weeped over us
and keep weeping,
the clouds used to be
smitten with us,
but wonder lasts but nine days, and
equally everything has passed.
That is to say life isn’t hard or easy –
it is a chain of artificial deeds.
As if a shadow, line has fallen on the sheet.
And we have nothing to do with it.
Though
            lived together
                for God knows
                how long,
but time into a slaughterer has turned.
Isn’t the air is likely being formed:
the molecules hastily shoving one another,
blush on the crimson roses and
the banknotes of five thousands,
blush through the tears I didn’t shed,
for time’s – no more than there was before.
The dawn is a crimson blood clot.
The poet and the building of five floors.
Oh, Muse, stay by my side when I
won’t have enough of words no more,
when the life, the tears and the love
will seem to be a fraud.

02:40, 08.03.15

V

Eyes fluttering beyond the eyelids –
the soldier is keeping to dream.
The sarafan changed to the jeans.
The naked girls there were!
And the hideous rats.
But nature is fancy
and somewhat irreparable:
as soon as he awakes,
everything he’ll forget –
the poet and the train, the ink –
all of it shall go with the wind.
Here comes the dot.
The calculated gesture of the poet.
I silently gazed to the window –
the dawn got changed with the wet mist,
the spoon was clinking in the tea,
the train was traveling to the ocean
where the leviathans do hide,
the hippos and the whales,
where ships count countries
as you do using a county frame,
and countries calculate the days
left before the next bout of arrival
of an eon, a day, a minute or a dream.
When left alone,
remember what you have been promising.

03:30, 08.03.15

VI

Îh, this
to the attention of none
silence!
In which the order’s
kept in absence,
not present without the footprint
of what is actually I am,
darker than black...
And only the whiteness
of the clean sheet.
And life which is at stake.
And the city
that got lost in the night.
And there’s no truth and no offense, only the fight
of the fair copy
with what makes one
go around the bend.
The end.

12:30, 07.03.15.

***

And even if these are chimeras.
The way the big winter begins,
embankment of Robespierre,
the gap between words and deeds,
the famous jail across,
the cities and towns making noise,
as if right to left,
as if without end.
Watch walls breaking down
and the breaking down house of the tarot cards,
the chimeras dancing beyond 
the no open bridge vast.
The way blue, green, crimson immingled
and with them - the ultramarine.
And next the sun fell in the arms
of the yellow vitrines.

 22:00, 11.11.16

***

The banner of nonsense,
the might of the keys,
insomnia, the corridors,
the darkness,
the ethics of chosen deathmen,
the lamp, the room, the curtains,
the mess of nothingness.

Vivaldi streaming out
of the loudspeakers of
the St. Anne’s Crown,
where the sunset along the road’s
lighting up and seeming a bandage,
crimson and rolled.

Leading my verses to the execution,
waking past
          the pit of Tavrichesky Garden,
towards the eternity with the eyes painted brilliant green
                and the bloodied mouth,
I wiggle-waggle.
Towards the Peter the Grate Brigde,
which is overhanging
            the abyss of deeds,
                verses and sorrows,
towards the flock of the cars               
                mooing their motors,
                ready for the ax.
Towards the feast of the Sunday,
jugulated.

02.04.18

***

The lantern of the sunset
looks directly in the eyes.
The constellations staying deaf
to the entreaty of the yearn.
Likewise the crows come flying from hell to a yard
and tear in pieces the years and the verses.
The greedy wind’s throwing them sideways
and they are flying, dancing in the night.
And I implore you: don’t you try to find
what neither you, nor me have right to know.
All of the rest are the details, paw paw.
But most important: do stay quiet.
As if with water your mouth being full.
It’s whirling in the glass like in an ocean.
And dead is the air in the room.

22:00, 03.03.14

***

All right then,
let the cop shops burst
and let the night cry
as if stabbing in the back,
all of this are the living colours
of all-devouring times,
all of this is to happen yet.
Capitalism is so disgusting,
as if it was a corpse of a drowned.
The windows on the buildings are
as if some sort of crosses on the houses.
The thurible of moon is swinging,
and church is alike some big boot.
The grave’s just a sort of a door.
The same God’s arguing with me,
but I trust him no more. 
Watch children perish, the wind howl heavily,
the crowd having fun,
the rain, tearing the lanes to shreds,
cut its way through the blackened city.
And at the hand are the same river
and the same cathedrals,
and the street lights are the clues,
sticking out in the dark.
And all the rattling, all the gossip. 
Or may it all be in my sleep made-up?

19.11.13

***

– My prince!
Let me speak.
All of what you told before,
is very strange, of course.
But is it in our might,
of common people,
to understand the dreams
that take hold of the master?
As if the thin ice is below the feet!
All that you know does not bring peace,
and something different’s not the insanity.
Quite the reverse!
‘cause for the artist the nature is
what he is likely to take.
– Oh, child of mine,
we are condemned.
We are under the frightful sight
that murders everyone,
and this fair mister’s not to stop.
There’s pride, the vengeance
and the trace of war.
And this is why
we are condemned to die.
– My prince!
Let me continue.
For the extension’s such a cause
where consequence
results in reason.
Let’s have a man talk.
I don’t care for image.
It is your mother
who sent me to you.
To ask to leave
immediately
for the dream is to murder me.
How do you like it?
You got pale,
that means, you’re ill though.
This is why we are to die.
– Oh, child of mine,
we’re as if in a trap,
and no salvation!
All because of this generation
knows only how to cut and stab
before they get to know
who is afore them.
I see right through them.
But what can I do?
I talk to them,
as if I spell the death.
I see that I am to get dead.
But for what for?
The torments of Hamlet?
Which he did stain with blood?
But I’m his servant.
We are the puppets in a vaudeville
and we can not change anything.
– My prince!
Let me report?
You’re to be murdered in the end,
with a poisonous blade,
but you, before, are to kill many.
Guilty and innocent,
close and distant.
Do you consider it beautiful?
Fair and reasonable?
Or, maybe, dignified?
Well, I say dirty.
Everybody has its own view.
One mutilates each one around him
and puckers up afore the pug-nosed death,
and drags everyone along with him.
He’s god and the judge,
and the prosecutor
to everyone around him.
And the other one...
But why would you care for him?
You are self-centered.
Fair enough,
the poison that put your father to death,
should have been in all conscience yours.
Or should have been shared for two.
This is the sole answer
to all of your issues.
So, we seem to have finished our talk.
And there’s no place for the insanity, for sure.

14

***

But what if not time,
not the song, not the style,
but an accident?
No more than a tangle
of some ridiculous deeds?
Oh, stardust!
Yesterday’s a dream.
Both got lost in cauldron,
in which the life’s boiling,
surrounded by the universe.
The one and the other,
both common to me,
from now on for evermore
gone and lost.
And the difference?
Between this and that?
Where is the present?
Right off in the past!
Therefore asking “why”,
makes the truth occur
no more than a slow lie.
So were
the thoughts of Suvorin.
The breakfast tea
was steaming in hand,
evoking despair in the morning.
Suvorin did not believe
the forecasts.
And shadow crawled off the wall
towards the ceiling,
crossing its path
with the heating.
And all of a sudden
it got really dark,
the sky got leaden. It rained.
And solely the last
frightened ray
stabbed the trees
as if a knife, somehow bloodstained.
Suvorin came round
and heard the footsteps.
– Wait, I want to stay alive.
But he was caught up
with the greasy rank soil,
over him forming a pile.

16:25, 03.06.13

***
 
As if the red rock of final
    all hell broke loose
rolling over the district of Smolny,
taking it start from Shpalernaya.
Signs, drawings, images, voices
are breaking through
the retina of the eye,
        through the brain - to veins.
And the prospect,
      being kinked by the April
           as if being some sort of linen,
with the grimace of villain,               
                predicate and grotesque,
is now twisting and howling,
                and crying
at the time not yet past or run out.
This is how life, severe and proud,
                sinks it’s teeth in the city
and rumbles its puddles,      
                shining
                and as if made of steel.
This way we ask
                someone
                to hold on or stop,
but this someone
                does not
                take it for real.

17:00, 08.04.18

***

Circe! I better would have stayed.
And after having poured the porter
all over the counter,
would beat the faces
of the local regulars.
You first would turn all of them into pigs.
It serves them right!
Ajax gone mad already,
all of the rest dispersed.
Who got killed here, who is yet to get killed?
So far he thinks his words make a way home,
as well as his deeds lead to the Charybdis.
Though I remember Ithaca no more,
of Penelope I still think.
This way the brain works,
this is why
I find the title boring.
What’s the use of Achilles’ armour? -
that one of the victorious warrior?
I do not thoroughly enjoy
the vision of the burning Troy.
The money and the spoils
are almost gone,
all got sunk to the bottom.
Where I sail I don’t know,
but, likely, towards the death, dabbling
and banishing the thoughts
off the inevitable end.
And, then, if so,
what are the torments for?
What for are the sound of the waves,
the salty taste of water? -
with the snatch of the distance,
that getting divided to a thousand other pieces,
leads towards all the same, whatever you’re to do?
Therefore one should
weaken one’s arms
and by a bloody bubble
both – calm and go – down.
Descend to Hades.
But I’ve been there.
I’d rather fight.
Push water – with my feet
and my way through it – with my hands.
Despite the gods and the skies
I shall swim homeward!
May even the seas with my blood fill in.
Though I remember Ithaca no more,
of Penelope I still think.

13:10, 02.10.13

***

Notched off the void
by one easy decision
to need to cut God
in the night,
then torment him and torture,
the way Svyatopolk’s army rised
to make the Tatars learn the hike -
so one should live!
By one decision, by despise
for common self,
for big ideas and the crowd,
for the authorities
being simple ‘cause of blood!
Doubtless is solely what you see,
and all the rest is a mere dream,
all of the rest’s up to be built
with equal metres, words and phrases,
and showing way how to cut veins:
properly lengthwise, not athwart.
The street light and the yard, the corpses
and the stash, hidden in a porch.
So is the total.

20:45, 26.03.15

***

A LETTER TO A WOMAN

It is half past three A.M.
At the table here I am,
at its corner, writing to you,
aware of you are to screw it,
without even heaving read,
but writing nevertheless.
I put country in a mess
with the tears and the blue sky,
and reflected in green eyes
are the date, the days, the weeks,
the drafts torn apart - you see? -
the track. Snow is silverlike.
Past the window sang their songs,
on the table crying now
- lyrics -
at the worshipped snowstorm,
at the fair copy’s waste land.
And life seemed just for a minute
to be graceful and laid-back.

03:35,14 02.15

***

Internal Affairs Directorate,
which is on the right to my house,
the neighbour, as if made of paper,
standing beyond the glass,
the cloud in guise of a beef,
enveloped in borrowed flames trees.
What is to happen - know only
a couple of dealers in stocks
and, it stands to reason, God.
But snow is to fall on the road.
- Tell me what is it like, the love?
- Alike clenching pinch of sonata
or a tortured day of summer,
alike the hurt out of hell
and all of the other issues
not even worth to tell. 

17:00, 02.02.14

***

As soon as love comes to an end,
hypocrisy comes into own.
And where shall one
find a right way to treat it?
And shall it be stronger
than our breakups for keeps?
Oh, give me such an understanding
to neither love, nor suffer,
and the green water to be.
But memories do not let fall asleep.
And sleep’s no use to me.
For we forget the dreams.
And what’s our use of them?
Likely the death, it seems,
alike the dream, is pointless,
but one has no will to awake.
Truth be told,
likewise the alarm rings in the morning,
but we’d like to delay
its sudden squeal
even way back, being asleep.
And, dear me, is the rest not all clear?
And once again we’re robbed of sleep
by the acknowledgment of all being in vain
and that the beautiful
shall one day become any of the names,
that we were born for the good of a dictate
that we saw in a dream;
for what is haunting us our whole lives is
the power of the order,
haunting us as if a some sort an annoying flu. –
The conscience, the moral,
the comprehension
and the hypocrisy,
which come as soon
as we assasinate the love.

19:10, 11.06.15

***

I already do not recall
all of the definitions
of such words as “peace” and “world”,
but know: everything’s to outcome the ugliest.
I could have turned into a poet,
but have no strength to put the lyrics
in the place of the crown.
So call out Rosencrantz!
Make him equip the ship.

We set sail to England!
What for?
Let the ruler tell himself about it.
You say I killed him?
But he was a dead body already back then,
within his own lifetime.
And he is worth to meet death twice.
Ophelia, it is all over.
But what is it with you? Is it the fright?

But for the one who got mad barely yesterday,
everything is devil-may-care and all the cats are grey.

When I saw you,
I felt all of the rest kind of to disappear –
the mischief, the court, the fight for the power.
Now all of it’s come between you and me.
All right then, do retire for some cell
on sacrifice.
This is all what I can advise.
What are advises? Everybody does
what he considers right.
Ophelia, your brother
is the murderer of friendship,
and also murderer – of him –
so am I!
Set off to convent!
Swim the rivers’ waves.
Do fall asleep for keeps.
Afore you is the water, green.
And should I care?
My blood is freezing
in anticipation
of the minute in which
I’ll murder Claudius.
And then shall sing this song, alas,
to anything but you.
On the edge of the abyss,
which is odious.
And, then, all of the rest – to screw.

08.2016

***

I saw that summer –
midnight, Leningrad.
Azure on yellow,
black insomnia of the poet.
Oh, night, open over the total defeat
and the admission of guilt,
drink, whore, the alcohol of doubts.
For all the rest is worth a naught.
The lantern of the Moon is swinging above us.
The Constellation of the Dipper
is to burst with tears,
for there are only us
under the thunderous skies,
and next are the blank, the typo,
the hard sign.
The wave is not to calm.
I know the neverending move of the seas
and the sky is orbiting around my automatic manner.
And there are only the sea, the city, the poet. 
Above them are the stars and the chimeras.
For there was never a point for and nor there is.

21:00, 22.06.15

***

It was wonderful,
so should we ask for more?
But the bout of the bliss
playing out to a fault.
The vortex of your eyes,
over road pouring rain -
only this, - morning cold
of never and nowhere.
Don’t you cry, it’s the bliss
and a word to recall.
And do put on that dress
when we meet one time more.

27.10.15

***

The war is over.
But what does it change?
Only the way you treat defeated foe
brings joy.
The greeks became those Troy
used to be famous for:
conceited dealers
with no honor or the manners.
The best are dead.
Only the heroes and the morrons are left alive,
and the focus of moral
is the difference
between them.
What height’s Telemachus?
I do not know who’ll turn out to be faster –
my message or myself,
but keep in mind:
you can not take advantage
of Odyssey with words of yours.
For I’m a better poet than a soldier.
And though I spilt no less blood than the ink,
I told a lot with lyrics
and I’m happy to remain myself.
I’m going to set sail
homeward
and shall advise the same to you,
before the Trojan maids
rob you off what’s left of
your clear mind and your money.
Though everyone is free
to do whatever he wants.
I set sail. All my trophies –
the honor of the Sly one
and the fame of the heinous weasel.
O, Ithaca! Is it what I have thought about
while leaving your green fields?
Even gods are unhappy with me.
Has any of the poets ever left them satisfied?
It never happened, so
I am awaiting from the voyage
a lot of distress,
but I consider my path ineluctable.
I only trust the coin and the fatum.
All of the rest is made up by a tyrant
that everybody calls the mind
or the law,
say, something common,
to make it easier to lay in the Procrustean bed
all that is hard to keep within the mind –
whether it be the space without borders,
or the limitlessness of time,
or its extremity,
which one can not
neither imagine
and nor realize.

11:10, 01.10.13

***

The cribs, the explanations,
the anguish of the fresh line,
the minutes, the hours, the moments,
the drafts being torn apart.
The verses doom the eternity
to sing in between dire aortas.
And next - the same very evening,
the flat, the airport.

Oh, Muse of mine, only remember
the way Ligovskiy shrouded us
from after tomorrow for now,
hidden in the tails of the eyes.
Hidden in the thorny game
of consonants, squares and boulevards.
And in a splendid halo
stood in between the crowd.

The tram rail and the rustle,
the run of the black cars.
Look at the light, fallen over the city
and therefore cracked in silence,
giving sentence a slap,
and then dropped off the radar.
But Ligovskiy‘s anew in motion,
with a shining over it star.

15:45, 02.11.16

***

Everything becomes different in April.
The spring goes smiling from inside the puddle,
And seems like never are again to come
neither the venturing, nor the till morning rattle.
Neither the pinned
pupils of the dealers,
nor thugs from Kupchino
with their shanks or the Makarov guns.
And how enjoyable it is to realize,
that all what’s left until June’s a couple of months.

01.04.15

***

I set off to the metro,
the dealer kept on ringing,
but I was running late.
Being afraid
that he would leave
without waiting for me,
I did not pick the phone,
as if was saying no to terror.
My fault was to bring
that bitch with me –
that mad one got sick on the bus,
though has smoked a single joint.
We got out,
the dealer did not tire to ring.
She started vomiting
somewhere around the shop.
Wearing the tights and mini,
in between the people,
sneaking glances,
she vomited with her ass upwards,
mixing the sexuality with crime,
but to think about it I had no time.
I set off to the metro.
We had appointment at the “Chernyshevskaya”.
I listened to the dealer’s moral on the choice
between the respect and the pot.
After the latter been preferred,
I said so long to him.
And next what did I see?
Around the corner,
she lighted her fag
from some drifter,
as if not vomited before
all over the prospect!
I wanted to say “You’re a bitch”,
but there was too much of what is
forbidden now to write about.
So, “Love, come on!” –
I called her out.

15:15, 26.12.15

***

The only thing clear is
no blush - on the paper.
Down moon is the pupil
of Kupchino area, -
see it past the window,
giving a wink
and circle-wise 
targeting laws of the spring.

04.16

***

Love is alike
some kind of a nightmare.
Victory over Troy
has not brought
any luck to greeks,
how often the victors
are left holding the bag!
The Trojans quenched their thirst with blood.
And Menelaus
as been a fool, so
has stayed.
Love is alike
some kind of a nightmare!
All of the rest... some dead in wreck,
that Jupiter has sent down on us,
some murdered in the homeland, other - in exile.
And only me,
the ninth day in a row,
nailed to a timber
with a bogus dream
and stubbornness, and faith in my own fortune,
still swimming
to a place unknown. 
While dreamboat Menelaus’s
caressing Helen in a drunken whirl.
This is the purpose greeks died for!
Love is alike
some kind of a nightmare!

10:20, 02.10.13

***

How many times are needed
to get to learn a belief?
The coin’s falling into the water,
the Moon’s whispering its wish
at sundown. Sprawling, the floor
sticking to the Earth crust.
Does Europe really need much?
Or do the young ones?
These toys are common:
marches, tanks, Lili Marlene,
skirts above the knee,
eyes as if from a play.
We do not need its return.
The Moon’s crooning songs at sundown,
The coin’s falling into the whirl.

15:15, 03.03.14

***

The clouds arranged in the evening parade.
Below them are the square and the crowd.
And the screw of the Alexandre Column
is firmly tightened to the ground.
The winter petrified the Neva
and sealed it in the gap between
the two embankments, but the ink
is screaming over Gulf of Finland -
on the horizon creeping out,
the damned, some sort of a snake,
and a betrayal of a kind.
And over it the universe opening wide,
and my dear book is being written.
As if the night in silent moan
lost everything and shortly found.
As if the Spire of Admiralty is a syringe,
pricking the vein of the sky.

00:25, 13.01.15

***

But listen, do listen! You,
more beautiful than many,
shall one day feed the grass,
become an object of rape.
When the sky by a kerplunk sound
starts to clink about something mysterious.
You, some icon painter’s dream, distant as Italy.
You
shall be transmitted from here there,
though there is no point in it,
the night shall capture your trace,
follow you with its eyes of a cat.
With the words
tough as a sack
of some old clothing and sandals,
July will explode and burst
with the voices of markets
and the greens mongers.
And then you with your beauty
shall become nothing.

23:15, 19.03.16

***

He imagined it otherwise,
but had no time
to think deep through.
So, both modest and smiling,
he came up to her:
“What’s your plan for tonight?
What do you do?”
She looked at him easily
and with no stress,
licked her lips first and then replied:
“A thousand for a blowjob,
one and a half – for the rest, –
so are my plans for tonight”.
A nasty drive for a verse,
but no waste of money, in fact.
And that first impression is accurate – surely is truly said.

27.07.16

***

Blood is the liquid running from the eyes.
Who are you talking to
from the antiquity, you, Homer?
The crowd stays indifferent to verse,
it is no more than an amusement for them.
Ludicrous part of the Illuminati -
how can they understand the light
they do not see and never ‘ve seen?
But what are fame and honor for a poet?
Blood is the liquid running from the eyes.
They laugh. And can it be in vain?
But I don’t care,
taking a tight grip on the eye of Cyclops,
hammering the poisonous nail in it.
No time remains for arguments
when life is what at stake there is.
Though not for the last time,
but frightening again.
Blood is the liquid running from the eyes.
Oh, can it be in vain?

20:24, 07.10.13

***

Where is the pen? Where is the paper?
Or at least the already cashed check?
To put down the proportion
of the dark and the point
from which the eon outspreads.
So crawl the limitless concepts,
the dust of the perspective,
the snatch of naught.
This is a twisted picture, along with
those of January scenes.
Where alike some wolves reasons grappled,
where are words of dead men, fear of loss,
where men threw themselves at the women
and baited them for their dogs.
Happiness of the righteous
are darkness and grief,
the thief’s are the stolen keys.
But the wolves do not make dogs,
even if tamed they’ve been.

21:35, 28.04.13

***

I heard all of these words before
and this intonation sounds common.
The tv, the radio, the voice –
I implore: lower the volume.
I shall lack proper line or song –
and who ever had it right?
For the lyrics are symptoms of illness,
which is both enough: fair and quite.
The night, the snowstorm
and the yellow light
in a black house
with a waste ground behind.
With a winter afore. 
The horizon
in the wet snow is sentenced to lie,
leaving the space inane.
Everything
shall remain
the same.
Likewise lovers
do humiliate
one another.

the one not this time you to contain.

08.11.16

***

The gang in the yard.
Neva started off.
Everybody in Adidas,
wearing sneakers
and the words do slop.

The calendars keep on lying:
the cold and the blizzard too.
The lads from the yard
beat about the bush.
I won’t go to GFR,
rather stay in hood.

10:00, 02.13

***

Isn’t it strange that apple
is once again the reason of discord?
Blind singer doesn’t see the serpent.
And at the point of no converse
the warrior and the politician intervenes.
But I am neither one and nor the other.
I am a poet, I am free
to paint all of the caves,
which even rats do not inhabit.
Although I dabble in selling from time to time.
Wrangle the flocks, compose the songs,
got married to a bride
that chose myself.
About rage of Paris - should I care?
Or should I - about mightiness of Troy?
About the beauty of Helen?
But I am going off to war,
and there no little of the blood will spill.
To contradict the fate is mere absurd
and for a poet is impossible.
Ithaca. The sea. And this morning.
I do what gods make me to do.
Though I am free. And what’s with logic -
it is the skilly for the poor in spirit.
And if the death comes for you, say, next morning?
Oh, shall you stay the same, beforehand knowing?
Oh, histrionic creatures, say!
What is to be?
Do answer, do.
But silentness is in the room.
Well now, you don’t want to -
I’ll say!
The war is the ground for a play,
a song, a poem and a country,
but manager knows sleight of hand
and to the war we’re subject.

16:00, 02.10.13

***

I coached towards the dawn.
Reading appalling lyrics, silently.
A ray, coming from crescent on the sky,
picked holes in the vehicle.
And both the cold and railways sang.
Compartment is the metaphor for life,
but way too blatant, isn’t it?
Hypnosis has nearly the same effect.
The stewardess, prehending many,
and yet still failing to embody,
closing her eyes, imagined theatre
and only tottered
in between the carriage and the life.
It was me solely,
who took the lower seat
and somehow keeping balance
wrote the verses or read them,
which is inherently
one sort of the same thing,
not to rule out the spent life.
But this is an external problem.
Which nobody has what it takes to solve.
Neither you, nor me,
neither God or Satan,
nor the court.

12:45
15.01.15

***

Say “so long”, do say it to me.
Say that I am not worth the love.
Say there is no way to change me.
Say “so long”, come on,
                say it to me.
Is it that hard - cut one’s loving out?
Likewise they failed to judge
                and excuse,
to convince me - equally
they failed to. Say “so long” to me.
Just remember: the words are
                the keys,
are the stars shining in the night,
they’re not subject to change.
                So do say,
even better not say but cry,
that the “no way” lesson of love
is the sole relic come out in time.
That remained solely characters
and all of this is the total, the fine,
divided by the flare of the dawn.
Say it to me, do say “so long”.

20:00, 15.02.17

***

Of what my mind is guilty
I still do not know.
Standing behind the curtain then
I thought:
there’s no my guilt
in bloody strife of the damned murderers,
that are ready to rip each others’ throats,
not to mention those
of the rest of men, for their feast.
They are proud, criminal, full of deceit,
but what I think about them I won’t say
neither within my life, nor in a poem.
And why do we
only keep sticking our necks out? What for?
Awaiting a command,
aIke the pigs below the fence.
And everyone believes
he’s got some unique streaks,
that he is to escape the hit of timeless death.
But the death is immortal!
Whom below is it to wax?
It is triumphant,
we are in its hands since birth.
So, what is stronger than it is?
The rulers’ words?
The curse of monarch?
Or, maybe, the life of a hero?
The history’s lowering criminally its own eyes.
Everything falls back afore death.
And if you doubt – go put it to the test.
But silence! Behind the gobelin
they cry about the rats.

21:40, 29.09.15

***

What for is this fortune?
And who shall need this?
Those shameful letters and rules.
Eyes, sparkling
                in the violet puddles.
The trees, with their
                caused by the dusk
                wounds.
And, once again, laws and arrests,
enclosures, Taganka, the trap.
And black market cells
                with their numbers,
as always being wiretapped.

13 - 14

***

Angels are weeping in hell,
bringing disaster upon their-selves.
Fear is claiming its loan:
squirms deliriously, groans.
Says: pay, the chocolate box
is not even to open.
This is even worse
than a phone call being extorted.
This is the one of those reasons
which for you get to the prison.
The fall laying hands on itself.
And the sky, far off, is dying.
The tide is tapping the stars
with its scarlet and opalesque line.
And isn’t it the answer
that for all of our life we have searched?
The fall, the road and the poet;
the verse, splitting sides, go whirl!
Sing facing the crows,
facing the court and shame.
Of what’s given by the river on the right
is there any gain?
All right then! Let it go on:
the wars, the squabble, the news.
Go then to die for
both fatherland and the ruler.

04.11.15

***

This borderline has thousand names,
it knows to take its hold of us –
don’t let yourself get to it close.
How sweet and fine is the sleep,
the inhale of smoke
after a foolish quarrel.

The eyes hiding beneath
a black hood,
so you walk a quarter
and then a squat,
the yards, the benches
and the talking:
the dealer next-door
been imprisoned.
The district’s still.
The two hours before the huddle,
but each time we do lack a dot, a moment,
to understand everything to its core.
Consciousness’s subject to a law,
and this is a surprise,
and, so,
no one’s exempt from a misdoing.
But how pleasant’s to be twofold fooled.

23:45, 02.01.14

***

North is upwards,
West’s – the left,
the right is the East.
Nezhin wasn’t quite sure of it,
but he blew the whistle.
Men in grey assembled and
tried to live their lives.
What gave them the common touch
were the chalked spoons and knives.
Anyway, let’s say,
it is what it is.
Nezhin knit his brows and went on
soiling thoroughly the sheet.
He sniffled, blew his own nose, coughed
and, then, spitting the goo,
in a half an hour gave
a whistle or two.
What’s the point? People kept living,
never even saw you.
Put the knives under the lyrics
and a log under the pillow,
tortured by the wind
for the whole night through.
Whom are you with?
Who are you?
Where do you head?
Truth turned into lie regardless
of the answer that he had.
So the nightmare swam the river
towards the bridge.
The South’s downwards.
No one is to last forever.
This commandment is no-frills.

07:00, 30.01.14

***

Not there, not here,
no further-more
and you know,
much more beautiful
than mist,
that closed the city in.
And forth might be a description
of how the poet set the picture,
the landscape, by the double tap,
simple and firm.
And syllables are sliding
like an ice-skater, doing a turn.
This way a threat is being uttered. In common form.
This way a winter,
that has come already,
is being torn.
Look out the window: January
and all the rest of the concern.

17:00, 11.17

***

To set “Macbeth” on stage is a mere crime.
A superstition worse than a black cat.
In constellations’ eyes there are surprise
along with spoons -
dirty and stained.
Talking about it ‘s aggravating.
But what you’re gonna do with you?
On ice-cold blanket fell
both love and hatred.

The suffocation of close windows
and bare perfection of the walls.
In constellations’ eyes there are surprise and eon -
with a long shadow on.

21:00, 11.07.13

***

I was different,
which is hard to explain.
Likewise’s hard to describe
beating of the hearts
of two people in love
running onto each other.
Or the sound of the wave –
you won’t tell it
from the one
already gone,
and yet, and still... it is the another!
Isn’t likely our unconscious
forcing our deeds and words?
And the conversations
are the no more
than a sort of a cover,
shrouding safely the core, -
so should one bother pulling it off?
For the awakening
provokes the disruption
of all of the feelings,
and if an exception
confirms the norm,
then here
shouldn’t it be
better to let all the things
go?

23:45, 02.01.14

***

And may December occur again hopeless,
go sing no song, it doesn’t make good sense.
But future is to turn out into present
when I shall take you by the hand.
When second to become eternal,
the world’s a carousel and we are in a bind,
but I fail to forget your eyes, forget this evening,
a minute turning into a year. For memory’s a lesson outlived.
And we shall not be what we were.
The cars are moving slowly past the window -
for whom and how exactly is measured the term?
And what’s our use of time,
both with its getting lost for good?
Glow of the headlights moving slow,
the river scaling off the ice.
Look at the all up dissolution I put through
the last of many of my lines on time.

23:30, 23.12.15.

***

For I am not the one to spit on the dead,
for I don’t want to start ‘bout the main,
for I do not sing your songs
and the Cesar I don’t praise.
The oblivion and the ground are the place for me.
The day crawls over the abyss of the sea
towards the thin air
as well as towards the damned lie.
My pen, do scratch the hard-hearted draft.
Sing my pen, do sing meanwhile!
Above me are seen the crescent, blue
and, just for a moment, intermited tune.
This is why company making troubles less,
this is why the insults and the crowd,
songs of yours I didn’t sing and won’t,
may me being murdered for the crime.

25-28.07.13

***

Oh, Denmark is enough to make brain reel.
For here are quarrels, cold, the ax,
and our prince
has something on his mind
in the same track. 
He’s wide awake dreaming of freedom,
which for a servant is a trusted sign
of murders yet to come.
Our prince is not a fool,
which means he’s to make
each and everyone
weep blood.
A fool on throne is much more trustful and placating!
Oh, Guildenstern,
let’s set forward to port,
where seagulls yelling
over the sea,
and one can listen to their screams
for ages,
where the ships are
and towards us is opening its arms the landing stage.
Let’s set forward to it.
Read out the command,
it’s explicit and clear -
if lords do claim the blood,
half-Denmark is to sink in it.
That’s my conclusion,
but we are the soldiers -
so let’s pretend we’re bursting with delight
and do our best to get things right.
Oh, my brain, same as yours,
reels, ‘cause of Denmark.

18

***

Yellow ghetto, the blue mud
and the blazing night.
Charging seas with blood -
the stars in the sky.
The city, the midnight and the question mark.

Life’s a mere prostitute,
the insanity of mind,
bitterness and solitude.

09:50, 01.02.13

***

I stepped out of the front door and set forward
to where no apology was apt.
The road, the summer and the powder.
I set back.
Abandon?
But to abandon what exactly?
Lyrics get petty
to comply with what is shallow.
They suffer loss of rhythm, loss of freshness.
I hear the cymbals’ clangour.
And this is to lead to a war.
Ironclad proofs are the revenge
of patriotic trance,
and what’s with sables on the neck
in the last hideous dance -
they are to no one’s credit.
Therefore do look the life directly in the eyes.
For it is easier to be a killer, than a writer.
The choir howling in the background.
And all-victorious streak of dawn
helps finishing the night.

08:40, 22.01.14

***

Ahead are darkness, fire and the mist.
Behold the city mirrored in tiara of the river -
the clock watch chimes in the wrist.
And that means to stop time is not in one’s power within.
And what of it that words are entangled
when sense and meaning are no more than delusion and dream.
A head rush in anticipation
of birth of something even I don’t understand. In paroxysm.
Behold the lyrics floating down the Neva and the lanes.
They flow over stars and drafts, the prospect’s frightened eyes.
And even though some would not put many things past me,
I’ll only stick to my own lines.

12:00, 28.10.15

***

When, by a colored bow,
the shadow flew over the fields of red poppies,
where tired Hypnosis was sleeping,
the dream went slowly
down the peak of thought
and, turning into the absurd,
went rambling through over the land.
That moment he awoke and went
towards his boat, counting the coins,
shoved off the pierce
and set sail down the dead Stiõ.
And in the quiet
all sounded clearer:
both splashing water
and the clash of broken oar.
A blushing ray of light from the external world
cried out like an echo.
Charon is counting souls as does the coins,
raising this tribute
from time out of mind.
He keeps count of his coins,
whereas we don’t even count the life in,
putting the days, the years, the weeks
somewhere aside.
To nothingness. To the nihil.
The soul of Charon is a shadow
where the light flashes for his fun and pleasure,
to let all of the dark that they name Soul
show shaded in.
And this is why he’s to seat in his boat for ages,
neither hearing the birdsongs,
nor seeing the morning sky
and not foreseeing the last days,
but only keeping count of coins.
And this is what with we are to begin.

18:00, 25.04.17

***

Shame of awaiting, fear and stand-in,
falsehood of Leningrad nights,
the community with the hell on the left of it,
in point of fact unattached.
Time, spinning in the reflection,
lyrics and smoke of the gages,
similar to a stage of siegå
at the river-bank.
Likewise the distance is set to compute -
the mirror, the dust, the inhale.
Likewise the moment is set to excuse.
The one that has come to hand.

21:00, 10.07.17

***

And so things coming to a head,
the night appearing as a guarantee.
July ablaze, the naught is laughing.
As if a wild handwriting dancing over me. 
Look at the star in its meridian.
Eraser of the verge of the non-being and of the lies of poetry,
and of the falsehood of what’s coming up - so is
my love.
Water ablaze! The country in the dusk,
shimmering over frame,
we are surrounded by the dark,
and scarcely any make us change.
We’re not to change, and that’s the point,
an ending similar to a beginning.
And, as you’ve promised,
you and I shall meet this evening.

19:30, 03.08.17

***

Horrendous lights of jail Kresty
are sparkling on the right.
The night has passed.
And the spire of the Admiralty
is hiding in between the houses.
I crossed the road. Electric light
pierced the eyes. Neva. The road and the night.
The poet - I got that truth out,
and not a single word for now,
only the scream from termless void,
no, not a single word for now,
only the verse with you and me,
the city, thunder, fusing into dawn,
in which are falling the depot,
the poet and the loss of sleep.

22:40, 19.08.15

***

Ophelia, all come to life
without taking place.
Grave digger waving dirty hands
As a result,
whatever you’re to do,
everything’s on a course to all the same.
Since as a king, since as a slave,
or, let’s say, Rosencrantz,
passage of time is not subject to change.
Love? Which one love?
When only hatred makes Earth spin.
And, to be honest, likewise it takes hold on me.
I am not different from others.
Ophelia, set off to convent.
To live down there my shame, before it gets too late.
Blood is all over here,
and the stars
gaze at uncaring Elsinore.
Here I shall die, though,
everybody will.
And what is life?
It is not worth a talk
and lasts not that much longer.
If all what lays beyond
we only can make wishes for.
For it is out of reach of our mind.
Even in thoughts below the death we do resign.
Grave digger waving dirty hands
and stars above are flying somewhere blindly -
a soggy flock. 
To tell the truth I’m even happy,
anticipating the payoff.
Only the gloom’s on the horizon.
And, in the blood red stain,
within my dream,
I see my father.
Oh, Denmark is enough to make brain reel.

18

***

This is my underground!
The carrots and the cookies.
The sun got awake and gives a shot
to the estuary of the well known river.
With a lucid ray of the dawn,
with the cries of the children, playing,
the nature is drawing patterns,
not leaving the game.
Not divulging a sigh,
a word, an answer, a fire.
What is wrong and what’s right –
of it I don’t want any part.
And you – do fix the commas
in an absurd mirage.
Leave all of your law alone.
Do listen: I’ll tell you, how
our friends went dying in
the oblique lanes by night,
how we shared a joint and a girl.
All of this came about
and memory’s spinning faster.
Put me on the pitchfork –
to me – this is actually more fun.
The rhyme is to console.
And – as if while a prayer at church –
I do not need things make sense.
My underground glows.

14

***

The poet. The verses. The paper.
Sverdlovsk. The end of April.
Moskovskaya, one hundred ninety five.
The trees got ready to explode
with the green blowup, but are slow,
and the clouds are crawling over the city,
casting a shadow on grey buildings.
Two weeks before May
and the sixth floor.
The hotel. The paper. The pencil. The verse.
The treason. Somewhat foes.
The slate. The pencil. And the verses.
Sverdlovsk as if some kind of a mirage.
The verses. The paper. The pencil.
The sixth floor and the sound of rain. 
The TV’s on: “Crimea’s ours”,
the advertising, the eyes of the chief.
The trees got ready to explode, but slow.
It’s almost 3 P.M.
The poetry’s alike expatriation
from nowhere to nowhere.
The verses crawling over the city,
flowing from the clean slate.
Morning to evening,
from the tribune to the paper.
I’ll choose the bravery of words
over the shallow bickering with spring,
for making the pencil, the verses and the paper
remain with me for keeps.

15:00, 16.04.16

***

Oh, my black star,
as back then do shine for me now,
from slate of paper, underground,
from nowhere to a thousand yard.
Lightening the night with a mirage, over both the word and the case,
to make me see and memorize
what I have lost and what have gained.
In the September, under yellow sky,
changing the power in the cipher,
from out of depth of as if vanished life,
in a book, in a window, clear in mind.
Shine for me here and in the dark,
inside, outside and sides apart.

Burn in my calendar,
snatching the difference off the sheet,
Oh, my black star, do shine for me.
 
17:00, 15.09.17

***

THE MODEST MEANS OF THE COMMON SENSE

The trees in the window. Dot.
What to do?
The time’s shaking in the absurd
of the fire.
The fatuous absurd you can count on.
The dawn
ripped the neck of the station.
The night.
The city’s alike
a lantern, a headlight
of some dreadful and crashed car.
Everything’s differently to outcome.
The Gulags, the rituals, the sacrifices, the cries.
They play by rules.
The shoes, the shirts, the French cuffs, the ties.
Alike them – already seen, nothing new.
The world’s put to the charts and graphs,
the zone is ready,
and they do already arrange the wedding,
the one of Malinovka and pessimism,
with the death in bed, and uncle Vanya.
They used to gossip, they keep on gossiping.
No one’s forgotten, nothing’s forgotten!
The prison, the loans,
the queue out of sample block,
the cowardice, the spite,
the opportunism,
the hard labours, the lists,
the proscriptions, the lies,
God, the rituals, the police.
Counter-balancing the liabilities
afore any of the systems,
they know, the Universe
always did smell the treason.
But where have all of you been,
when the others did kill and bury?
To tolerate and not look round –
the modest means of the common sense.
The shame of the seamless tabloids –
the cross-beam of love and the humanism.
Hitler wiped away the tear of a child.
Not every bullet results in a shot,
not every path leads homeward.
A dog’s not to chase down
the running hare.
The pot and the pills,
the winter, the fixes.
Soon they will come for you.
The obscuration of conscience and pessimism.
Any of the politics seek for its feed,
any of the animals seek for philosophy.
The dung of humanism
to condone
any of your deeds – so is
what’s in fashion.
The best way to deal.
This is the best way to deal.
To play it by ear,
making up for the prudence
with the liters of blood and the corpses of children.
And again no one gives a fuck.
It’s declared with the blood beneath the feet.
My city’s flashing the headlights.
The uncompromising solitude,
as if by some social demand of the eternity,
or that one of the ways of Anna Karenin.
The old order, as if a syphilitic, and the others as well. Sic.
Any of the moves becomes criminal.
The world of the society of the fucking spectacle,
the reasonable act got itself entangled.
Being subject to its circumstances,
the night’s to cut the evening and even the morning.
Judas is to end up with the perfidy 
of the absolute nothingness.
Seamless logic of the unhealthy vision of things. 
The herd of pigs,
always getting to where it is not supposed to.
The clear conscience will stain the righteous,
but what isn’t begun yet
is already rectified.
Horacio’s burning and so is his city.
Kiev is sparkling with the adverts’ eyes.
Moscow taught us to trust the icons.
But neither life, nor death can divide.
The slimy hell of the russian history.
The dignity of the small man –
the pigs are treated to the swill only.
Here are always the loads of the dirty snow,
the whole eternity out of snow.
But what’s our use of it?
And should we care?
The epilepsy of the incomprehension.
The lack of the charges
to put on the bloodbath of the common sense.
Saint Mary’s watching from the cloud above.
Heaven is just a tight glove.   
The guard of the perimeter yawns with its gun,
Russia is hanging on a soldier’s belt.
To go deaf, to go blind, which means to accept.


Q.E.D.

16