Green Lantern

The ineffable…
I've walked into your trap.
I went to a spring late at night
and froze like a armless statue in the middle of an autumn garden.
What should I do? Should I grab with my teeth the knotty pencils of the twigs?
Throw myself in front of limousine-long words?
Draw on the dirt? Scratch the asphalt?..
But a young maple embraced a female street light,
a glass flower on a metal pole,
and dressed the iron in yellow leaves:
"You are alive; now you are one of us!"
Three girls with their hair down
gracefully click-clacked out onto the path,
and the smells of expensive shampoos, fluffy like minks,
sashayed behind them…
I could hear each sound, felt the details:
A cyclist flew past. The slender swish of the spokes.
Two boys buried themselves in their gadgets – fat moths
in the rings of lilac light,
the soft snouts hit against the flickering screens,
and oh miracle! – down the asphalt stream,
a couple waltzed
under the platinum shine of a streetlight.
She, an angel in a white jacket, with a backpack, taught him.
Hundreds of thoughts, details, images swarmed,
Buzzed, demanded, nibbled –
But how many of the impressions would survive?
Or would they melt like bits of butter
on the heated pan of existence…
I found myself in the center of the slow hurricane
of red and yellow butterflies of October,
of ephemeron moments…

Oh God, how can I express this?
Phosphorescent salty water of meaning
passes through the sieve of mind,
and thoughts and thoughts and thoughts swirl in the brain like music by Liszt.
Look how fast a maple leaf falls.
It looks like a pianist with his leg in cast.
I darted out of the night shadows, changed
by the ineffable – as if the slightest radiation
had changed the lyrical code of my soul.
On the verge of tears, I ran home,
the stumps of my arms moving,
and carried in my teeth
the ghostly green ray…





(translated by Sergey Gerasimov, 2016)