* * *
Back? With vulgar nakedness
Teasing and blinding to the point of tears —
It spilled over with nothing but this golden
Laughing lustful lovemaking.70
* * *
— Isn’t it true? — A clinging,
Crumpling stare. In each eyelash there is — an itch.
— And most importantly — this thickness!”
A gesture, twisting me into a wisp.
* * *
O, a gesture already showing ripping garments
Off! It’s easier than drinking and eating —
A grin! (There’s hope for you,
Alas, for salvation!)
* * *
Both sisterly and brotherly?
In alliance: a union!
— Not laying to rest — to laugh!
(And having laid to rest — I laugh.)
* * *
7
Then — the embankment. Last one.
That’s it. Separately and without hands,
Like neighbors shunning one another
We plod along. From the river —
* * *
Crying. Without cares I lick off
The salty plunging quicksilver:
The heavens did not dispatch
Solomon’s enormous moon to the tears.71
* * *
A pillar. Why not bang your head against it
Till it bleeds? Into smithereens, not till it bleeds!
Like fretting criminal accomplices
We ramble along. (What is killed is — love.)
* * *
Stop it! Is this really two lovers?
Into the night? Separately? To sleep with others?
“Do you understand that the future
Is in this?” I fall all the way back.
* * *
“To sleep!” Like newlyweds walking over their bedside rug...
“To sleep!” We can’t walk in step,
To the same beat. Plaintively: “Take me by the hand!
We’re not convicts to act this way!..
* * *
An electric shock. (He lay on my arm as though
With his soul! — His hand on my hand.) The current
Pulses, in feverish wires
It tears — he lay on my soul with his hand!
* * *
He clings. Everything is iridescent! What is more
Iridescent than tears? Rain, like a bead curtain,
Closer spaced than the beads. “I don’t know these kinds of embankments
That come to an end. — The bridge, and:
“Well?
Here?” (The hearse has arrived).
The flight upward of peace — ful
Eyes. “Can I walk you home?”
For the fin — al time!
* * *
8
The fin — al bridge.
(I won’t give back his hand, I won’t pull mine away!)
The final bridge,
The final bridge of blame.
* * *
Wa — ter72 and firmament.
I take out the coins.
A co — in73 for death,
Charon’s toll for crossing the Lethe.
* * *
The shadow of a co — in
In a shadowy hand. Those co — ins have
No sound.
Thus the shadow of a co — in
* * *
Into a shadowy hand.
Without reflection or jingling.
The co — ins are for them.
For the dead poppies will be enough.
* * *
A bridge.
The bles — sed part
Of lovers without hope:
Bridge, you are like passion:
A convention: a complete in-between.
* * *
I’m nesting: warm,
Is the rib — that’s why I cling to it so hard.
Neither before nor afterward:
An interlude of insight!
No arms or legs.
With all my bones and my entire thrust:
Only my side is alive,
Which I press against the one next to me.
* * *
All life is in this side!
It is an ear as well as — an echo.
I cling like a yolk to the egg white,
* * *
I crowd to it, I stick to it,
I pave the way to it. Siamese twins,
What is your union compared to ours?
Do you remember — that woman: you called her
* * *
Mother? And having forgotten all and
Everything, in an immobile exultation
Carrying y — ou,
She didn’t hold you any closer.
* * *
Understand it! We’ve lived like one together!
We’ve come true! You lullabied me on your chest!
I won’t — jump down!
To dive — I’d have to let go of your hand
* * *
In – stead. I press tighter and tighter...
And I’m inseparable.
Bridge, you’re not my husband:
A lover — a complete miss!
* * *
Bridge, you are on our side!
We feed the river with our bodies!
I’ve bitten into your life like ivy,
Like a tick: rip me out by the roots!
* * *
Like ivy! like a tick! —
Godlessly! Inhumanly!
Du – mp me, — like a thing,
Me who didn’t respect
* * *
A single thing in this
Hollow, material world!
Tell me it’s a dream!
That it’s night, and after night — it’s morning,
* * *
The Ex — press train and we’re in Rome!
In Granada? I don’t know myself,
Having tossed away the Mt. Blancs
And Himalyas of feather beds.
* * *
The cha — sm is too vast:
I warm you up with my last blood.
Lis — ten to my side!
This is surely truer
* * *
Than ver—ses... Aren’t you
Warmed up? To whom will you sell yourself in the morning?
Te — ll me this is a delirium!
That there’s not and never will be an end
* * *
To the bri — dge...
— The end.
— Here? —A divine, childlike
Gesture. —Well? — I’ve sunk my teeth in.
— Ju —st a little more:
For the last time!”
* * *
9
With the factory buildings, booming
And responsive to the call...
The innermost secret from under the tongue of
Wives from husbands, and of widows
* * *
From friends — to you, the innermost
Secret of Eve from the tree — here it is:
I’m no more than an animal
Wounded in the gut by someone.
* * *
It burns... As though my soul’s been torn out
With the skin! The notorious
* * *
Nonsensical heresy called the soul
Left through a hole like steam.
* * *
Pale Christian feebleness!
Steam! Plaster it with poultices!
It never was after all!
There was just a body, the body wanted to live,
It doesn’t want to live anymore.
* * *
Forgive me! I didn’t want to!
The wail of ripped open bowels!
This way the condemned wait for the firing squad
At three in the morning
* * *
Playing chess... With a smile
Teasing the corridor’s peephole.
We’re just chess pawns!
And somebody plays us.
* * *
Who? Benevolent gods? Thieves?
As big as a peephole’s eyelet —
An eye. The clank of
The red corridor. A bar’s lifted up.
* * *
A puff on a shag of tobacco.
A spitting, so we’ve lived it up, spitting.
...Along these checkerboard pavements is
A straight road: into a ditch
* * *
And into blood. A secret eye:
The moon’s listening peephole...
.....................................................
And looking sideways:
“How far away you are already!”
* * *
10
A shared shudder
In unison. “Our dairy bar café!”
* * *
Our island, our temple,
Where in the morning we were —
* * *
Part of the riff-raff! A short-lived pair! —
We celebrated our matins.
* * *
With the bazaar and vile stench
Permeated through with a dream and with spring...
Here the coffee was foul —
As though it were made entirely of oats!
* * *
(To extinguish capriciousness
With oats in racehorses!)
That coffee hardly smelled
Of Arabia,
* * *
But of Arcadia...
* * *
How the waitress smiled at us,
Seating us next to each other,
With a worldly and compassionate —
Guarded smile of
* * *
Gray-haired mistresses:
You will wither away! Live!
She smiled at our madness, at pennilessness,
At a yawn and at love, —
* * *
But mainly — at our youth!
At a chuckle — without reason,
At a grin — without intent,
At a face — without wrinkles —
* * *
O, mainly — at our youth!
At passions wrong for this climate!
Youth that has wafted — from somewhere,
That has poured in — from somewhere
* * *
Into the dim cafe:
— A burnouse and Tunis! —
Smiled at hopes and muscles
Beneath the decrepitude of raiments...
* * *
(Dear friend, I’m not complaining:
A scar on top of a scar!)
O, how the hostess
Saw us off in a starched
* * *
Dutch bonnet...
Not quite recalling, not quite understanding,
As though we were taken away from a celebration...
— Our street! — Now it’s not ours anymore... —
—So many times along it... — No longer we... —
* * *
— Tomorrow the sun will rise in the west!
— David will break up with Jehovah!
* * *
— What are we doing? — Par — ting.
— That most stupid of words
* * *
Means nothing to me:
We are par — ting. — One out of a hundred?74
Just a word with two syllables
Behind which there is a void.
Stop! Is it Serbian or Croatian,
I guess, is it the Czech country going crazy in us?
Par — ting. To part...
What super-most-natural of nonsense!
* * *
The sound from which ears explode,
They stretch beyond the limit of longing...
Par — ting — it’s not in the Russian tongue!
Not in the woman’s! Not in the man’s!
* * *
Not in God’s! What are we — sheep,
Yawning at suppertime?
Par — ting — in what language?
There’s no such meaning,
* * *
Not even a sound! It’s simply the dull
Noise — of a saw, for example, through a dream.
Par — ting — is just a nightingale’s moan,
That of the swan of Khlebnikov’s
* * *
School... 75
But how did it turn out this way?
Like a dried up reservoir —
The air! You can hear a hand touching a hand.
To part — this is surely thunder
* * *
Out of the blue... This is the ocean dashing into a cabin.
The outermost cape of Oceania!
These streets are too steep:
To part — this surely is going down
* * *
A mountain... This is the sigh of soles
Weighing a ton...76 A palm, finally, and a nail!
A reason that knocks you down:
To part — this is really separately, isn’t it,
* * *
But we’ve grown into one…
* * *
11
To lose everything right away —
It couldn’t be tidier.
Countryside, suburb:
An end to the days.
* * *
To bliss (read — to stones),
To the days, to the houses, to us.
* * *
Empty dachas! I revere them
The same way — as I did my old mother.
* * *
This surely is action — to stand empty:
What is hollow doesn’t stay empty.
* * *
(Dachas, a third of you empty,
Better for you to burn down!)
* * *
Just don’t shudder
Having opened the wound.
Countryside, countryside,
A tearing of sutures!
* * *
For without superfluous words,
Ornate ones — love is a suture.
* * *
A suture, and not a bandage, a suture — not a shield.
“O, don’t beg for shelter!”
A suture by which the dead are stitched to the earth,
By which I’m stitched to you.
* * *
(Time will still show with which stitch:
A light one or three—ply!)
* * *
One way or another, my friend — arms at attention!
Into smithereens and slivers!
Only that of glory that has burst:
It’s burst but didn’t come apart at the seams!
Under the tacking thread — is a living red
Vein and not decay.
* * *
O, the one who breaks off
Doesn’t lose!
The countryside, the suburb:
A divorce for brows.
They’re executing nowadays in the
Villages — a draft of wind for brains!
* * *
O, one who walks away doesn’t lose
At the hour when the dawn breaks.
I stitched a whole life for you
During the night, from scratch.
* * *
So don’t reproach me for it being crooked:
The suburb is: — a rip for sutures.
* * *
Untidied up souls —
Are covered with scars!..
* * *
The countryside, the suburb:
The furious span
* * *
Of the suburb. With the boot of fate,
Do you hear it — along the moist clay?
...Blame it on my quick hand,
Friend, and the tenacious living
* * *
Thread — whichever way you damn it!
The fin — al lamp—post!
Here? A look is — just like —
A conspiracy. The look —
Of the lower races. “Can we go up the mountain?
For the fin — al time!”
* * *
12
Like a thick mane
Rain in our eyes. — Hills.
We passed the suburbs.
We’re in the countryside.
* * *
There is — and isn’t for us!
A stepmother — not a mother!
Nowhere to go further.
Here we’ll pack it in.
* * *
A field. A fence.
We stand like brother and sister.