Golder than gold

Golder than gold

***
I build a house on the seashore,
yet the sea turns into ice.
A titmouse snaps the final match,
And still, you do not come.
The apples bruise their heavy sides.
Wasps bite deep into greedy blushes.
               With a sharp blade,
I carve away the flesh that is unblemished.
The cider gathers strength.
It babbles on—who knows what nonsense—
beneath an antediluvian cloak,
preparing to treat the clever ones
       as if they were but fools.
To tickle with its bubbles
the parched throats of idle talkers.
To strike the nose,
spreading like amber over mustaches
already ennobled by their place beside the hearth.
Stripping bare within the glints,
          the humbled space recoils,
and for the timid master of these dainties,
       within a treacherous mirage
              for tempting fate with common,
simple words— there, there, she’ll appear, casting
the sweet lure of a siren,
                till she births
a heart turned inside out.
But one must still the hissing gold—free
           from wavering reflections
in the emerald of bottles—until your arrival,
and then—no trouble with anyone at all!

***
Let the one who lives, rejoice,
and let the one who died, instruct the angels
how to guard even more keenly those who rejoice—
if they are not subhuman
    and do not grovel before such,
but hold to their own path,
as the word is held by the one
who knows
whose
it will be.

***
To Viktor Koryahin

Should I one day become a smith—
         I shall entwine all space
with the lines of your loneliness:
         let it grow wiser.
Let it grow more vulnerable,
a burden to possession,
        a tremor to the wind.
By such shifts let it swirl and eddy,
so that for the titmouse’s fledglings
          it acts like branches,
     for the wanderer and the vastness—
if but a faint solace,
at least it does no harm.
For yourself, you will
       accomplish nothing anyway.

Should I turn to smithing to seek my fortune—
      there will be much to ponder,
much to help the titmouse with.
She flits about, a preoccupied mite,
whistling for her brood, comforting with crumbs.
Eat, you witless ones, chirp,
do not fear the man.
As for the others—perhaps they will not crave—
to break themselves against these forged coils
for the sake of some clever prey;
they will disdain it.

The swallows, flying past,
will wonder what these signs might be.
What kind of milestones these are, so unthreatening.
But these are the lines
of your loneliness that cannot fly apart,
Nor join the flock.
They are afraid, oh so afraid, being bent in the fire:
       to sleep through the cradle,
to dispossess the green fledglings,
to turn into a fence.

Strange, they will say. Toward the light—how can one not swerve,
when the darkness vexes with its scorn,
thinking, the fool, that she is all-powerful.
But she will grow wiser, the clawed one;
  having braved us, she will begin to flirt.
Not painfully, but only so that upon the tanned skin
a trace remains, to catch the hands,
from the arched back to lick a salty drop, like a bead of dew.
Burn, fire. Life is long.

***
Tied by a branch
to the flock of birds,
I nudge aside my angel
as I lie down at the edge
if only mother would appear in a dream
and say, ah—
father and I pulled you from the bottom of the sea
not to surrender you
to the tribunal of the astral.
will anyone pray for such a one
in their absence?
A cat at my side and a dog at my feet
on a stranger’s couch, they feel like my own
and the bliss of this far-gone trio
is not from the potion in our blood.

***
A white dog drinks the golden water
and the gold does not diminish
she drinks and drinks, never enough—
it happens, I guess.
A white dog walks across golden sand,
more golden than gold itself—
well, what’s so strange in that?
But you’re already on the verge of tears,
clinging like a snail, now to me,
now to the pourer of ingots.
Even I am weary of being
among strangers,
especially in summer.
I will stay with you,
drawn upon the sand,
reflected in the water—
playing the fool for the King of Heaven,
dressing myself in golden hairs.
My golden-winged guardian,
show some respect, join the company;
we have drinks with us
and you will be given breast milk
impregnated by the Holy Spirit
Urania,
No matter that her eyes are welling too, that little fool;
for the sake of such luxury—it was worth
not sparing
the figure.