В Садах Ватикана. In the Vatican Gardens

In the Vatican Gardens
orchids and roses are blooming.
In the hugs of the trap –
between the spokes of the wheels of time –
Rome falls asleep,
but the colossus will collapse
in the chariots of foreign flags.
Moscow
clings to autumn through the rains.
Hostage of the fog,
you write to me in the blue holes of the sky
and breathe,
dreaming of pizza.
In the crack of my coat,
the tail of thoughts about your vice-
is gloomy wagging.
I am nothing to you,
but in a blitz of messages
I appear as the Firebird –
the divine roses, the gardeners,
the orchids, the secret lovers,
the Pope and the priestess
in the Vatican Gardens
have seen me
in their dreams...
Love is not tap water,
and is wider and deeper
than the Euphrates and the Tiber.
The wound from the ex-saber-toothed tiger
– experience of the bottom –
burns me.
Without a breath,
I’ve become deaf
because of the sound of dirty hooves,
that have trampled
the white wings of my tenderness
up to a laugh – the inevitability!
The horizon is empty,
except for incense and candles.
The legs on the shoulders of the page-Solitude
are not for a cartoon,
but it’s still risky –
I’m relaxed, while
it’s too cold...
However, midnight frosts
act like anesthesia,
and feelings are enemies.
In the Vatican Gardens,
orchids and roses are blooming...
Your brain excites me,
but I’m reckless myself.
Death works 24 hours a day
and is not hungry:
knowing everyone’s expiration date,
(in the heart / in the back / in the temple,
straight or diagonally),
it drinks juice –
it feeds on the prose
of your infernal life.
Tick-tock, tick-tock,
you are young in the evening,
you wake up already ancient in the morning,
but I love you silently,
for no reason.
In the hugs of the trap –
between the spokes of the wheels of time –
there are
neither prayers, nor threats
of substitution of names! –
let both orchids and roses
blooming
in the Vatican Gardens...

October 4, 2024