Text collection

Bosnia Tune

As you pour yourself a scotch,

crush a roach, or check your watch,

as your hand adjusts your tie,

people die.

In the towns with funny names,

hit by bullets, cought in flames,

by and large not knowing why,

people die.

In small places you don't know

of, yet big for having no

chance to scream or say good-bye,

people die.

People die as you elect

new apostles of neglect,

self-restraint, etc. -- whereby

people die.

Too far off to practice love

for thy neighbor/brother Slav,

where your cherubds dread to fly,

people die.

While the statues disagree,

Cain's version, history

for its fuel tends to buy

those who die.

As you watch the athletes score,

check your latest statement, or

sing your child a lullaby,

people die.

Timee, whose sharp blood-thirsty quill

parts the killed from those who kill,

will pronounce the latter tribe

as your tribe.

Date unknown, perhaps around 1995 because of Bosnian events. Written by Brodsky in English. -- S. W.

History of the Twentieth Century (A Roadshow)

The Sun's in its orbit,

yet I feel morbid.

Act 1

Prologue

Ladies and gentlemen and the day!

All ye made of sweet human clay!

Let me tell you: you are o'kay.

Our show is to start without much delay.

So let me inform you right away:

this is not a play but the end of the play

that has been on for some eighty years.

It received its boos and received its cheers.

It won't last for long, one fears.

Men and machines lie to rest or rust.

Nothing arrives as quick as the Past.

What we'll show you presently is the cast

of characters who have ceased to act.

Each of these lives has become a fact

from which you presumably can subtract

but to which you blissfully cannot add.

The consequences of that could be bad

for your looks or your blood.

For they are the cause, you are the effect.

because they lie flat, you are still erect.

Citizens! Don't neglect

history! History holds the clue

to your taxes and to your flu,

to what comes out of the blue.

We'll show you battlefields, bedrooms, labs,

sinking ships and escaping subs,

cradles, weddings, divorces, slabs.

Folks! The curtain's about to rise!

What you'll see won't look like a Paradise.

Still, the Past may moisten a pair of eyes,

for its prices were lower than our sales,

for it was ruining cities: not blood cells;

for on the horizon it's not taut sails

but the wind that fails.

1900. A quiet year, you bet.

True: none of you is alive as yet.

The '00' stands for the lack of you.

Still, things are happening, quite a few.

In China, the Boxers are smashing whites.

In Russia, A.P.Chekhov writes.

In Italy, Floria Tosca screams.

Freud, in Vienna, interprets dreams.

The Impressionists paint, Rodin still sculpts.

In Africa, Boers grab the British scalps

or vice versa (who cares, my dear?).

And McKinley is re-elected here.

There are four great empires, three good democracies.

The rest of the world sports loin-cloths and moccasins,

speaking both figuratively and literally.

Upstaging "Umberto's" in Little Italy,

in the big one Umberto the Ist's shot dead.

(Not all that's written on walls is read).

And marking the century's real turn,

Friedrich Nietzsche dies, Louis Armstrong's born

to refute the great Kraut's unholy

"God is dead" with "Hello, Dolly."

The man of the year, though, is an engineer.

John Browning is his name.

He's patented something. So let us hear

about John's claim to fame.

( John Moses Browning )

"I looked at the calendar, and I saw

that there are a hundred years to go.

That made me a little nervous

for I thought of my neighbors.

I've multiplied them one hundred times:

it came to them being all over!

So I went to my study that looks out on limes

and invented this cute revolver!"

1901. A swell, modest time.

A T-bone steak is about a dime.

Queen Victoria dies; but then Australia

repeats her silhouette and, inter alia,

joins the Commonwealth. In the humid woods

of Tahiti, Gauguin paints his swarthy nudes.

In China, the Boxers take the rap.

Max Planck in his lab (not on his lap

yet) in studying radiation.

Verdi dies too. But our proud nation,

represented by Mrs.Disney, awards the world

with a kid by the name of Walt

who'll animate the screen. Off screen,

the British launch their first submarine.

But it's a cake-walk or a Strindberg play

or Freud's "Psychopathology of Everyday

Life" that really are not to be missed!

And McKinley's shot dead by an anarchist.

The man of the year is Signore Marconi.

He is an Italian, a Roman.

His name prophetically rhymes with "Sony":

they have a few things in common.

( Guglieimo Marconi )

"In a Catholic country where the sky is blue

and clouds look like cherubs' vestiges,

one daily receives through the air a few

wordless but clear messages.

Regular speech has its boring spoils:

it leads to more speech, to violence,

it looks like spaghetti, it also coils.

That's why I've built the wireless!"

1902. Just another bland

peaceful year. They dissect a gland

and discover hormones. And a hormone

once discovered is never gone.

The Boer War (ten thousand dead) is over.

Elsewhere, kind Europeans offer

railroad chains to a noble savage.

A stork leaves a bundle in a Persian cabbage

patch, and the tag reads "Khomeini". Greeks, Serbs, Croats,

and Bulgars are at each others' throats.

Claude Monet paints bridges nevertheless.

The population of the U.S.

is approximately 76

million: all of them having sex

to affect our present rent.

Plus Teddy Roosevelt's the President.

The man of the year is Arthur Conan Doyle,

a writer. The subjects of his great toil

are a private dick and a paunchy doc;

occasionally, a dog.

( Sir Arthur Conan Doyle )

"Imagine the worst: your subconscious is

as dull as your conscience. And you, a noble

soul, grab a Luger and make Swiss cheese

out of your skull. Better take my novel

about the Hound of the Baskervilles!

It'll save a handful of your brain cells

and beef up your dreams. For it simply kills

time and somebody else!"

1903. You may start to spy

on the future. Old Europe's sky

is a little dim. To increase its dimness,

The Krupp Works in Essen erect their chimneys.

(Thus the sense of Geld breeds the sense of guilt.)

Still, more smoke comes from London, from a smoke-filled

room where with guile and passion

Bolsheviks curse Mensheviks in Russian.

Speaking of Slavs: The Serbian King and Queen

are done by local well-wishers in.

Painters Whistler, Gauguin, Pissarro are gone.

Panama rents us its Canal Zone.

While bidding their maidens bye-bye and cheerio,

the tommies sail off to grab Nigeria

and turn it into a British colony:

to date, a nation's greatest felony

is if it's neither friend nor foe.

My father is born. So is Evelyn Waugh.

Man of the year, I am proud to say

is two men. They are brothers. Together, they

sport two heads, four legs and four hands-which brings

us to their bird's four wings.

( The Wright Brothers )

"We are Orville and Wilbur Wright.

Our name simply rhymes with 'flight'!

This may partially explain

why we decided to build a plane.

Oh there are no men in the skies, just wind!

Cities look like newspaper print.

Mountains glitter and rivers bend.

But the ultimate plane'd rather bomb than land!"

1904. Things which were in store

hit the counter. There is a war.

Japan, ever so smiling, gnashes

teeth and bites off what, in fact, in Russia's.

Other than that, in Milan police

crack local skulls. But more common is

the touch of the new safety razor blade.

The nuances of the White Slave Trade,

Mount St.Victoire by Monsieur Cezanne

and other trifles under the sun

including popular French disgust

with the Vatican, are discussed

in every Partisan cafeteria.

Radioactivity - still a theory -

is stated by Rutherford (when a particle

brings you a lordship we call it practical).

And as the first Rolls Royce engines churn,

Chekhov dies but Graham Greene is born,

so is George Balanchine, to upgrade the stage,

so too - though it's sin to disclose her age -

is Miss Dietrich, to daunt the screen.

And New York hears its subway's first horrid scream!

The man of the year is a Hottentot.

South-West Africa's where he dwells.

In a German colony. And is being taught

German. So he rebels.

( A Hottentot )

"Germans to me are extremely white.

They are white in broad daylight and what's more, at night.

Plus if you try to win minds and hearts

of locals, you don't call a black guy "schwarz" -

"Schwarz" sounds shoddy and worse than "black".

Change your language and then come back!

Fly, my arrow, and hit a Hans

to cure a Hans of his arrogance!"

1905. In the news: Japan.

Which means that the century is upon

us. Diminishing the lifespan

of Russian dreadnoughts to naught, Japan

tells urbi et orbi it's loathe to lurk

in the wings of geography. In Petersburg

those whose empty stomachs churn

take to the streets. Yet they won't return

home, for the Cossacks adore long streets.

A salesman of the Singer sewing devices greets

in Latvia the arrival of yet another

daughter, who is to become my mother.

In Spain, unaware of this clever ploy,

Pablo Picasso depicts his "Boy

With Pipe" in blue. While the shades of blonde,

Swedes and Norwegians, dissolve their bond.

And Norway goes independent; yet

that's not enough to turn brunette.

Speaking of things that sound rather queer,

E is equated to MC square

by Albert Einstein, and the Fauvists

(Les Fauves is the French for unruly beasts)

unleash Henri Matisse in Paris.

"The Merry Widow" by Franz Lehar is

the toast of the town. Plus Transvaal gets its

constitution called by the natives "the pits".

And Greta Garbo, La belle dame sans

merci, is born. So are neon signs.

The man of the year, our record tells,

is neither Strindberg nor H.G.Wells,

he is not Albert Schweitzer, not Oscar Wilde:

his name is obscured by his own brain-child.

( Camouflage )

"I am what gentleman wear in the field

when they are afraid that they may be killed.

I am called camouflage. Sporting me, each creature

feels both safer and close to Nature.

The green makes your simper's pupil sore.

That's what forests and swamps are for.

The planet itself wears me: the design

is as French as it is divine."

1906. Time stands at ease.

Having one letter in common with

his subject, Freud adds to our bookshelf

preparing the century for itself.

On the whole, Europeans become much nicer

to each other: in Africa. Still, the Kaiser

when asked of the growth of his navy, lies.

The Japs, for some reason, nationalize

their railroads of whose existence none,

save several spices, had known.

Along the same, so to speak cast-iron

lines, aping the rod of Aaron,

the Simplon Tunnel opens to hit your sight

with a smoking non-stop Vis-a-vis. Aside

from that the civilized world condemns

night shifts (in factories though) for dames.

Prime ministers are leapfrogging in

Russia, as though they've seen

in a crystal ball that the future keeps

no room for these kinds of leaps.

The French Government warily says "pardon"

to Captain Dreyfus, a Jew who's done

ten years in the slimmer on the charge of treason.

Still, this distinction between a prison

and a Jew has no prophetic air.

The U.S. troops have a brief affair

with the Island of Cuba: their first tete-a-tete.

Samuel Beckett is born. Paul Cezanne is dead.

The man of the year is Herr von Pirquet.

He stings like honey-bee.

The sting screams like Prince Hamlet's sick parakeet:

TB or not TB.

( Dr. Clement von Pirquet )

"What I call allergy, you call rash.

I'll give you an analogy: each time you blush,

it shows you're too susceptible to something lurid,

obscene and antiseptical to hope to cure it.

This, roughly, is the principle that guides my needle.

To prove you are invincible it hurts a little;

it plucks from your pale cheeks the blooming roses

and checks their petals for tuberculosis!"

As for 1907, it's neither here

not there. But Auden is born this year!

This birth is the greatest of all prologues!

Still, Pavlov gets interested in dogs.

Next door Mendeleev, his bearded neighbor

who gave the universe the table

of its elements, slips into a coma.

The Cubists' first show, while Oklahoma

becomes the Union's 46th

state. Elsewhere New Zeland seeks

to fly the Union Jack. Lumiere

develops the colored pictures ere

anyone else (we all owe it to him!)

The Roman Pope takes a rather dim

view of modernism: jealous Iago!

Having squashed (4-0) Detroit, Chicago

forever thirsting for Gloria Mundi

wins the World Series. In Swinemunde

Nicholas the IInd meets the German Kaiser

for a cup of tea. That, again, is neither

here not there, like Kalamazoo.

And Carl Hagenbeck opens his careless zoo

where walruses swim, lions pace, birds fly

proving: animals also can live a lie.

The man of the year, you won't believe,

is Joseph Stalin, then just a tried.

He is young; he is twenty-eight;

but History's there, and he cannot wait.

( Joseph Dzhugashvili, alias Stalin )

"My childhood was rotten, I lived in mud.

I hold up banks 'cause I miss my dad.

So to help the party, for all my troubles

one day I took four hundred grand in roubles.

Thus far, it was the greatest heist

in the Russian history after Christ.

Some call me eager, some call me zealous;

I just like big figures with their crowd of zeroes."

1908 is a real bore

though it provides a new high in gore

by means of an earthquake in the Southern part

of Calabria, Italy. Still, the world of art

tries to replace those one hundred fifty

thousand victims with things as nifty

as Monet's depiction of the Ducal Palace

in Venice, or with Isadora's galas,

or with the birth of Ian Fleming: to fill the crater.

In the World Series Chicago's again a winner.

In the Balkans, Bosnia and Herzegovina

are taken by Austria (for what it took

it will pay somewhat later with its Archduke).

And the fountain pen is in vogue worldwide.

The gas of helium's liquefied

in Holland which means the rising of

that flat country a bit above

sea level, which means thoughts vertical.

The king and the crown prince are killed in Portugal,

for horizontality's sake no doubt.

Also, the first Model T is out

in Dearborn to roam our blissful quarters

trailed by the news that General Motors

is incorporated. The English Edward

and Russia's Nicholas make an effort

to know each other aboard a yacht.

The Germans watch it but don't react -

or do, but that cannot be photographed.

And the Republic calls on William Taft.

The man of the year is German scientist

Paul Ehrlich. He digs bacterias

and sires immunology. All the sapiens

owe a lot to his theories.

( Paul Ehrlich )

"The world is essentially a community

and to syphilis, nobody has immunity.

So what I've invented beefs up your arsenal

for living a life that's a bit more personal.

I've made Salvarsan. Oh my Salvarsan!

It may cure your wife, it may cure your son,

it may cure yourself and your mistress fast.

Think of Paul Ehrlich as you pull or thrust!"

1909 trots a fine straight line.

Three Lives are published by Gertrude Stein.

(On the strength of this book, if its author vies

for the man of the year, she sure qualifies.)

Other than that, there is something murky

about the political life in Turkey:

in those parts, every man has a younger brother,

and as Sultans they love to depose each other.

The same goes apparently in Iran:

Ahmed Shah tells Mohammed Ali: "I run

the show", though he's 12 years old.

In Paris, Sergei Diaghilev strikes gold

with his "Ballets Russes". While in Honduras,

screaming the usual "God, endure us!"

peasants slaughter each other: it's a civil war.

Sigmund Freud crosses the waters for

to tell our Wonderland's cats and Alices

a few things about psychoanalysis.

But David Griffith of Motion Pictures,

boggling one's dreams, casts Mary Pickford.

The Brits, aping the Royal Dutch

Shell Company, too, legalize their touch

on the Persian oil. The Rockefeller

Foundation is launched to stall a failure

and to boost a genus. Leaving all the blight,

glitter and stuff made of Bake light

(that heralds the Plastic Age) far below, the weary

bearded and valiant Captain Robert Peary

reaches the North Pole, and thus subscribes

virginal white to the Stars and Stripes.

Ah those days when one's thoughts were glued

to this version of the Absolute!

The man of the year is the unknown

nameless hairdresser in London Town.

Stirred either by its cumulous firmament

or by the British anthem, he invents the permanent.

( A London hairdresser )

"The Sun never sets over this Empire.

Still, all empires one day expire.

They go to pieces, they get undone.

The wind of history is no fun.

Let England be England and rule the waves!

And let those waves be real raves.

Let them be dark, red, chestnut, blonde

unruffled by great events beyond!"

1910 marks the end of the first decade.

As such, it can definitely be okayed.

For there is clearly a democratic

trend. Though at times things take an erratic

turn. Like when Egypt's Prime Minister, through no fault

of his, gets murdered. But the revolt

in Albania is the work of masses

(although how they tell their oppressed from their ruling class is

anyone's guess). Plus Portugal bravely rids

itself of its king, and as he's hugged by the Brits,

becomes a republic. As for the Brits themselves,

one more generation of them learns God saves

no king, and mourning the sad demise

of Edward the Seventh, they fix their eyes

on George the Fifth. Mark Twain and Tolstoy die too.

But Karl May has just published his Winnetou

in German. In Paris, they've seen and heard

Stravinsky-cum-Diaghilev's "Firebird".

That causes some riot, albeit a tiny one.

Whereas the twangs of the Argentinean

Tango do to the world what the feared and hailed

Halley's comet, thank heavens, failed

to do. And our watchful Congress

finds it illegal if not incongruous

to take ladies across state lines

for purposes it declines

to spell out, while Japan moves nearer

to Korea: a face that invades a mirror.

The man of the year is an architect.

His name is Frank Lloyd Wright.

Things that he's built still stand erect,

nay! hug what they stand on tight.

(Frank Lloyd Wright)

"Nature and space have no walls or doors,

and roaming at will is what man adores.

So, a builder of houses, I decide

to bring the outside inside.

You don't build them tall: you build them flat.

That's what Nature is so good at.

You go easy on bricks and big on glass

so that space may sashay your parquets like grass."

1911 is wholly given

to looking balanced albeit uneven.

In Hamburg, stirring his nation's helm

the German Kaiser (for you, Wilhelm

the Second) demands what sounds weird for some:

"A Place for Germany in the Sun".

It you were French, you would say C'est tout.

Yet Hitler is barely twenty-two

and things in the sun aren't so hot besides.

The activity of the sun excites

the Chinese to abolish pigtails and then

proclaim a republic with Sun Yat-Sen

their first President. (Although how three hundred

twenty-five millions can be handled

by a Parliament, frankly, beats

me. That is, how many seats

would they have had in that grand pavilion?

And even if it's just one guy per million

what would a minority of, say, ten percent

add up to? This is like counting sand!

For this democracy has no lexicon!)

Along the same latitude, the Mexican

Civil War is over, and saintly, hesitant

Francisco Madero becomes the President.

Italy finding the Turks too coarse

to deal with, resorts to the air force

for the first time in history, while da Vinci's

Mona Lisa gets stolen from the Louver - which is

why the cops in Paris grab Monsieur Guillaume

Apollinaire who though born in Rome,

writes in French, and has other energies.

Rilke prints his Duinese Elegies

and in London, suffragettes poke their black

umbrellas at Whitehall and cry Alack!

Man of the year is a great Norwegian.

The crucial word in their tongue is "Skol".

They are born wearing turtlenecks in that region.

When they go South, they hit the Pole.

(Roald Amundsen)

"I am Roald Amundsen. I like ice.

The world is my oyster for it's capped twice

with ice: first, Arctical, then Antarctical.

Human life in those parts is a missing article.

O! when the temperature falls subzero

the eyes grow blue, the heart sincere.

There are neither doubts nor a question mark:

it's the tails of your huskies which pull and bark".

1912. Captain Robert Scott

reaches the South Pole also. Except he got

there later than Amundsen. He stares at ice,

thinks of his family, prays, and dies.

Ice, however, is not through yet.

S.S. Titanic hits an iceberg at

full speed and goes down. The bell grimly tolls

at Lloyd's in London. Fifteen hundred souls

are lost, if not more. Therefore, let's turn

to Romania where Eugene Ionesco's born

or to Turkey and her Balkan neighbors: each

one of them feels an itch to reach

for the gun; on reflection, though, they abandon

the idea. It's peace everywhere. In London

by now there are five hundred movie theaters

which makes an issue of baby-sitters.

At home, after having less done than said;

Woodrow Wilson becomes the Prez. Dead-set

to pocket the dizzy with flipping coin

New Mexico and Arizona join

the Union. For all its steel mills and farms

the Union keeps currently under arms

only one hundred thousand men. That's barmy

considering five million in the Russian Army,

or four million in Germany, or the French

who, too, have as many to fill a trench.

This sounds to some like a lack of caution.

But then there is the Atlantic Ocean

between the Continent and the U.S.,

and it's only 1912, God bless,

and the hemispheres luckily seem unable

to play the now popular Cain and Abel.

The man of the year is both short and tall.

He's nameless, and well he should

stay nameless: for spoiling for us free fall

by using a parachute.

(Captain Albert Berry)

"Leaving home with umbrella? Take a parachute!

When it rains from below, that is when they shoot

down a plane and its pilot objects to die,

when you wand to grab Holland or drop a spy

behind enemy lines, you need parachutes.

O, they'll be more popular than a pair of shoes.

In their soft descent they suggest a dove.

Aye! it's not only love that comes from above!"

1913. Peace is wearing thin

in the Balkans. Great powers try their pristine

routine of talks, but only soil white gloves:

Turkey and the whole bunch of Slavs

slash one another as if there is no tomorrow.

The States think there is; and being thorough

introduce the federal income tax.

Still, what really spells the Pax

Americana is the assembly line

Ford installs in Michigan. Some decline

of capitalism! No libertine or Marxist

could foresee this development in the darkest

possible dream. Speaking of such a dream,

California hears the first natal scream

of Richard Nixon. However, the most

loaded sounds are those uttered by Robert Frost

whose A Boy's Will and North of Boston

are printed in England and nearly lost on

his compatriots eyeing in sentimental

rapture the newly-built Grand Central

Station where they later would

act as though hired by Hollywood.

In the meantime, M.Proust lets his stylus saunter

the Swann's Way, H.Geyger designs his counter;

probing nothing perilous or perdu,

Stravinsky produces Le Sacre du

Printemps, a ballet, in Paris, France.

But the fox-trot is what people really dance.

And as Schweitzer cures lepers and subs dive deeper,

the hottest news is the modest zipper.

Think of the preliminaries it skips

timing your lips with you fingertips!

The man of the year is, I fear, Niels Bohr.

He comes from the same place as danishes.

He builds what one feels like when one can't score

or what one looks like when one vanishes.

(Niels Bohr)

Atoms are small. Atoms are nice. Until you split one, of course.

Then they get large enough to play dice with your whole universe.

A model of an atom is what I've built! Something both small and big!

Inside, it resembles the sense of guilt. Outside, the lunar dig.

1914

Nineteen-fourteen! Oh, nineteen-fourteen!

Ah, some years shouldn't be let out of quarantine!

Well, this is one of them. Things get raw:

In Paris, the editor of Figaro

is shot dead by the wife of the French finance

minister, for printing this lady's - sans

merci, should we add? - steamy letters to

- ah, who cares!.. And apparently it's c'est tout

also for a socialist and pacifist

of all times, Jean Jaures. He who shook his fist

at the Parliament urging hot heads to cool it,

dies, as he dines, by some bigot's bullet

in a cafe. Ah, those early, single

shots of Nineteen-fourteen! ah, the index finger

of an assassin! ah, white puffs in the blue acrylic!..

There is something pastoral, nay! idyllic

about these murders. About that Irish enema

the Brits suffer in Dublin again. And about Panama

Canal's grand opening. Or about that doc

and his open heart surgery on his dog...

Well, to make these things disappear forever,

the Archduke is arriving at Sarajevo;

and there is in the crowd that unshaven, timid

youth, with his handgun.... (To be continued).

1986

Written by Brodsky in English. See notes in the translation by E. Finkel. -- S. W.

From nowhere with love, on the -eenth of Marchember,

dear respectful my darling, doesn't matter

even who, for the face, speaking frankly,

is impossible to remember, not yours, and

no-one's best friend, sends his regards being on one

of the five continents, related to cow-boys;

I loved you more than angels and even Himself

and am further from you now than from them both;

late at night, in the sleeping valley, in its very pit,

twisting at night on the blank bed-sheet --

as not mentioned below at least, -- with a throb

I whip up the pillow by moaning "you"

from beyond the seas, its shores connecting

in the dark, with my body your body through

all it's features, as a crazy mirror, reflecting.

Translation by Polina Belkina (?). Source unknown.

I threw my arms about those shoulders, glancing

at what emerged behind that back,

and saw a chair pushed slightly forward,

merging now with the lighted wall.

The lamp glared too bright to show

the shabby furniture to some advantage,

and that is why sofa of brown leather

shone a sort of yellow in a corner.

The table looked bare, the parquet glossy,

the stove quite dark, and in a dusty frame

a landscape did not stir. Only the sideboard

seemed to me to have some animation.

But a moth flitted round the room,

causing my arrested glance to shift;

and if at any time a ghost had lived here,

he now was gone, abandoning this house.

Translation by an unknown translator, source unknown.

From a School Anthology

1. E. Larionova

E. Larionova. Brunette. A colonel's

and a typist's daughter. Looked

at you like someone studying a clockface.

She tried to help her fellow mortals.

One day when we were lying side by side

upon the beach, crumbling some chocolate,

she said, looking straight ahead, out

to where the yachts held to their course,

that if I wanted to, I could.

She loved to kiss. Her mouth

reminded me of the caves of Kars.

But I wasn't scared off.

I hold

this memory dear, like a trophy won

on some unintelligible battle-

front, from enemies unknown.

That lover of plump women, that lurking tom,

D. Kulikov, then hove in sight --

he married her, did Dima Kulikov.

She joined a women's choir,

while he toils in a classified establishment --

a great bony engineer...

But I can still recall the long corridor

and my struggle with her on the chest-of-drawers.

Dima at the time was an ugly little pioneer.

Where did it all go? Where's the reference point?

And how can one, today, hope to discover

that which has transfigured all these lives?

A strange world lurked behind her eyes

she could not understand herself. Or rather,

she did not understand it even as a wife.

Kulikov is living. I am living. She is living.

But what happened to that world?

Perhaps it is keeping them awake?

I keep mumbling my words.

Snatches of a waltz come to me through the wall.

And the rain rustles on broken bricks.

2. Oleg Poddobry

Oleg Poddobry. His father was

a fencing coach. He was familiar with

it all -- thrust, parry, lunge.

No ladies' man, nevertheless

he used to score, as sometimes happens

in the world of sports, from offside.

That was at night. His mother was sick,

his little brother wailing in the crib.

Oleg picked up an axe and when

his father entered, battle began.

But the neighbours arrived in the nick

and four of them got the better of the son.

I remember his face, his hands;

next, the foil with a wooden grip.

Sometimes we practised fencing in the kitchen.

He got hold of a ring with a whopping stone;

used to splash around in out communal bath...

He and I left school together; then

he joined a cookery class, while I

worked as a milling operator in the Arsenal.

He baked pancakes in the Taurid Gardens.

We had a good time carting firewood,

on New Year's Eve sold fir trees at the station.

Unfortunately, in association

with some low character,

he did a shop -- he got three years for that.

He warmed his ration up over the bonfire.

Was released. Survived some heavy drinking.

Did factory-construction work.

Got married to a nurse it seems.

Began to paint. Wanted, apparently,

to take up art. His landscapes were,

in places, not unlike

still-lifes. Then he got pinched

for playing tricks with medical certificates.

Now all there is, is silence.

I haven't seen him now for years.

Was inside myself but didn't run into him.

Now I am free. But even out of gaol

I never see him.

Somewhere

he is surely strolling through the woods, breathing in

the wind. Neither kitchen, gaol, nor college could

absorb him. And he vanished. Like Jack Frost

he managed to disguise himself.

I hope he is alive and safe.

Now he excites my interest,

like the other characters from out of childhood.

But he is more unreachable than they.

3. T. Zimina

T. Zimina; a delightful child.

Her mother was an engineer, her dad

a tally-clerk -- I never knew them.

She was not easily impressed. Although

a frontier pilot married her.

But that was later. Her trouble

started earlier than that. She had

a relative. A district committee man.

With a car. Her folks were separated.

Evidently, they had problems of their own.

A car was quite unheard of.

Well, it all began with that.

She was upset. But later, things

seemed to be improving, as it were.

A gloomy Georgian came on the scene.

But suddenly he landed up in prison.

And then she gave herself

to the counter in a large haberdashery.

Linen, fabrics, eau-de-Cologne.

She loved the whole atmosphere,

the confidences and her friends' admirers.

Passers-by goggling through the window.

In the distance, the officers' Club. And officers

flocking like birds, with a mass of buttons.

The pilot, returning from the skies,

congratulated her on her good looks.

He gave her a champagne salute.

Marriage. However, in the Air Force

a high value is placed on chastity; it

is raised to the level of an absolute.

And it was this scholasticism that

accounted for her almost drowning.

She had already found a bridge, but winter'd come.

The canal was covered with an icy crust.

And again she hurried to her counter.

A fringe edged her eyelashes.

Onto her ashy hair the neon

lights poured their radiance.

Spring -- and by the doors flung wide,

the current of customers seethes.

She stands and gazes from the piles of linen

into the murky channel, like a Lorelei.

4. Yu. Sandul

Yu. Sandul. Sweet-tempered as a polecat.

With a face that sharpened towards the nose.

Informed on people. Always wore a collar.

Went into raptures over caps with peaks.

Made speeches in the lavatory about

whether the badge should be pinned on the jacket.

Pinned it on. Generally enthused

over all kinds of emblems and insignia.

Loved ranks and titles to distraction.

Styled himself `PT Instructor',

though was as old as Jacob to look at.

Considered furunculosis as his scourge.

Was susceptible to colds,

stayed at home in bad weather.

Mugged up his Bradis tables. Was bored.

Knew chemistry and yearned for the institute.

But landed in the infantry after school --

those secret underground forces.

Now he is drilling holes. It's said,

in the Diesel works. That may not be so accurate.

But perhaps accuracy is irrelevant here.

Of course, it's a speciality, a status.

What's important is, he's doing a correspondence course.

At this point we will lift the curtain's edge.

At dusk, besides absorbing Marx, he leafs

through The Strength of Materials. Such books,

incidentally, give off

a special scent at night.

Doesn't consider himself to be

a simple worker. In fact, looks to the next class.

At dusk he strives for new

horizons. Metal's resistance

is pleasanter in theory! He is bursting

to be an engineer, to get at blueprints.

And, come what may, he will be one.

Like this... the amount of labour,

surplus value... progress...

And all this scholasticism about the market...

He makes his way through dense thickets.

Would like to marry. But hasn't the time.

And he prefers parries, casual

relationships, addresses.

`Our future -- smiling -- engineer'.

He remembers the sombre mass

and gazes past the girls, out of the window.

He is lonely in his own manner.

He is a traitor to his class.

Perhaps I am overdoing it. But

the utilization of a class for hire

is more dangerous than the perfidy of men.

`Youth is sinful. Blood is hot,' he says.

I even remember that plain-speaking poster

that dealt with casual relationships.

But there is no clinic and no doctor

to guard you against these déclassé ones, to

protect you from the inflammation.

And if the age we live in is no wife to us,

then it's so as not to pass on the infection

from this generation to the next.

That is a baton we can do without.

Translated by Daniel Weissbort

The Funeral of Bobó

Bobó is dead, but don't take off your hat.

You can't explain why there's no consolation.

We cannot pin a butterfly upon

the Admiralty spire -- we'd only crush it.

The squares of windows no matter where

one looks on every side. And as reply

to `what happened?' you open up

an empty can: `Apparently, this did.'

Bobó is dead. Wednesday ends.

On streets devoid of spots to spend the night

it's white, so white. Only the black water

in the night river does not retain the snow.

Bobó is dead -- a line containing grief.

The squares of windows, archways' semicircle.

Such freezing frost that if one's to be killed,

then let it be from firearms.

Farewell, Bobó, my beautiful Bobó.

My tear would suit sliced cheese.

We are too frail to follow after you,

nor are we strong enough to stay in place.

In heat-waves and in devastating cold

I know beforehand, your image will

not diminish -- but quite to the contrary --

in Rossi's inimitable prospect.

Bobó is dead. This is a feeling which can

be shared, but slippery like soap.

Today I dreamed that I was lying

upon my bed. And so it was in fact.

Tear off a page, correct the date:

the list of losses opens with a zero.

Dreams without Bobó suggest reality.

A square of air comes in the window vent.

Bobó is dead. And, one's lips somewhat

apart, one wants to say `it shouldn't be'.

No doubt it's emptiness that follows death.

Both far more probable, and worse than Hell.

You were everything. But because you are

dead now, my Bobó, you have become

nothing -- more precisely, a glob of emptiness.

Which, if one considers it, is quite a lot.

Bobó is dead. On rounded eyes

the sight of the horizon is like a knife,

but neither Kiki nor Zaza, Bobó,

will take your place. That is impossible.

Thursday is coming. I believe in emptiness.

It's quite like Hell there, only shittier.

And the new Dante bends toward the page,

and on an empty spot he sets a word.

January-March 1972

Translated by Carl R. Proffer

Note: Bobó (accented on the second syllable) is not really a Russian name; it is non-specific and quite rare, but it can be used for a girl in some circumstances (and the verbs in the poem are feminine), or it can be a dog's name, or it can be uttered when a child is hurt, and it has the possible association of Dostoyevsky's `Bobok'. Vital phonetic associations (Bobo-babochka) disappear in English (Bobo-butterfly). Among the other problems are the English reader's lack of familiarity with Leningrad architectural monuments and such things as the Russian word sleza (tear) also being the word for the holes in cheese. -- C. P.

Love

Twice I awoke this night, and went

to the window. The streetlamps were

a fragment of a sentence spoken in sleep,

leading to nothing, like omission points,

affording me no comfort and no cheer.

I dreamt of you, with child, and now,

having lived so many years apart from you,

experienced my guilt, and my hands,

joyfully stroking your belly,

found they were fumbling at my trousers

and the light-switch. Shuffling to the window,

I realized I had left you there alone,

in the dark, in the dream, where patiently

you waited and did not blame me,

when I returned, for the unnatural

interruption. For in the dark

that which in the light has broken off, lasts;

there we are married, wedded, we play

the two-backed beast; and children

justify our nakedness.

On some future night you will again

come to me, tired, thin now,

and I shall see a son or daughter,

as yet unnamed -- this time I'll

not hurry to the light-switch, nor

will I remove my hand; because I've not the right

to leave you in that realm of silent

shadows, before the fence of days,

falling into dependence from a reality

containing me -- unattainable.

1971

Translated by Daniel Weissbort

Two Hours in Reservoir

"I'm bored, my fiend..."

A. Pushkin

I am an anti-fascist... anti-Faust

Ich liebe life and I admire chaos

Ich bin to wish, Genosse Offizieren,

Dem Zeit zum Faust for a while spazieren.

Without embracing Polish propaganda,

In Krakow he had missed his Vaterland, and

He dreamt of the philosopher's true diamond

And sometimes doubted his own talent.

He gently picked, off ground, ladies' tissues,

He got excited with the gender issues,

Along, in school he played the polo's virtues.

He studied deeply gambling catechismus,

And learned to taste the sweetness of Cartesian.

Then crawled deep down into the Artesian

well of ego-centrism. The military slyness

For which was famous Mr. Clausewitz,

For him remained apparently unknown,

Whereas to Vater was a wood artisan.

Zum beispiel, in outbreak of glaucoma,

The plague, cholera und Tuberculosen,

He saved himself by schwarze Papierossen.

Attracted by the Gypsies and the Moors.

He then became a bachelor alumnus.

Was granted then a licentiate laurus

And sang to students, "Cambrian... dinosaurs..."

A German man -- a German cerebrum.

Without mentioning, Cogito ergo sum.

Undoubtedly -- Deutschland uber alles.

(One's ears can catch a famous Vienna's waltz).

He parted with Krakow with some heart cheer,

And took a carriage in a rush to sheer

To chair the school with honest glass of beer.

A splendid C-moon shines out of the clouds.

Tremendous foliant. A man above it.

A wrinkle darkens right 'twixt the eyebrows,

His eyes -- the lacework devilry of Arabs.

With a Cordovan black chalk in his right hand

And from the corner, he's watched at profile length

By Meph-ibn-Stopheles: an Arab agent.

The candles burning. Screeches under clothes-bin.

"Herr Doktor, midnight". "Jawohl, schlafen, schlafen..."

Two dark black muzzles open utter "meow",

From kitchen quietly comes a Yiddish Frau.

She holds a sizzling omelet with fried bacon.

Herr doctor jots the address on the letter:

"Gott Strafe. England. London. Francis Bacon".

Concerns and demons come and go further,

The years and guests do come and go further...

One can't recall then dresses, words, or weather.

That's how all the years have passed and gone swift.

He knew the Arabic, but didn't know Sanskrit.

And yet quite late, hey, Faust had discovered

Before him, eine kleine Fräulein Margaret.

And then to Cairo he had sent epistle

By which he voted back his soul from devil.

Meph had arrived while he had changed his clothes.

He gazed into the mirrow and saw close

That he forever is metamorphosed.

To maiden's boudoir, with flowers, kitschy

He then set off. Und veni, vidi, vici.

Ich liebe clearness. Ja. Ich liebe promptness.

Ich bin to ask to see here no vileness.

You're hinting that he loved the flower lasses.

Ich understanden, das ist ganze swiftness.

But this transaction macht der grosse Minus.

Die righte Sprache, macht der grosse Sinus:

The heart and spirit nein gehabt in surplus.

In vain you alles would expect from creatures:

"Behold -- said to the moment -- you're so gorgeous"

The devil all the time among us wanders

And by the minute he awaits this phrase.

Nevertheless, a man, mein liebe Herren,

Is so uncertain in his greatest darings,

That each time lies as if he sells the air

And yet like Goethe could not goof by chance.

Und grosser Dichter Goethe made a blooper

With which subjected to a ganze risk that matter.

And Thomas Mann had ruined his best seller

And cher Gounod confused his lady actor.

The fine art is the fine art is the fine art...

I'd rather sing in skies than fib in concert.

Die Kunst gehabt the need in truthful kind heart.

By all fair means, of death, he could be scared.

From where the demons come, he was aware.

He fed der dog on all Galens, Ibn-Sinas.

He could das Wasser drain in knees and fingers.

He could define the tree age by the log rings,

He knew where to the stars' ways lead us rightly.

But Doctor Faust nichts knew of Almighty.

There's mystique. There's faith. And there is God.

There's difference between them. And there's oneness.

Some men are itched by flesh, while some are saved.

Unfaith is sightlessness, or rather swine-ness.

The Lord looks down. Up above look men.

Yet everybody seeks his own profit..

God's infinite. Indeed. And what is man?

And man, most probably, is very finite.

A man has got his ceiling, which in fact

Could always be up there, a little mobile.

A flatterer will find his way to heart.

And life no more is seen beyond the devil.

That's how Doctor Faust was. Likewise

Marlowe, and Goethe, Thomas Mann and masses

of singers, intellectuals und, alas,

The readers in milieu of other classes.

Same flow sweeps away their foot steps too,

Their retorts, -- Donnerwetter!, -- vibes and musings...

So grant them, God, the time to scream "Where to?"

And listen to the answers of their Muses.

An honest German for der Weg zuruck

Won't wait until he's summoned by the others.

He takes his Walter out of his warm slacks

And then forever leaves to a Walter-Closet.

Fräulein, please tell me was ist das "incubus"?

Incubus das ist eine kleine globus.

Noch grosser Dichter Goethe gave us rebus

And Ibycus's evil bearing cranes,

When having fled off Weimar's foggy cloud,

They, of the pocket, snatched a key right out,

By Eckermann's insight, not being rescued.

And now we got, Matrosen, in a fix.

There are spiritually thuthful queries.

Mystique is indication of a failure

In an attempt to handle them. However,

Ich bin -- unworthy topic to debate--.

Zum beispiel: Ceiling starts the roofing layers;

One poem lavisher... one human -- nietzsche-r.

I can recall Godmother in a niche there.

Abundant Frühstuck served right into bed.

Again September, Boredom. Full moon's blown.

Gray witch does "meow" at my feet below.

I put a hatchet right beneath my pillow...

Some schnapps will do! Well this is apgemacht!

Jawohl, September. Character gets rotten

And spinning, in a field a roaring tractor.

Ich liebe life and "Völkisch Beobachter".

Gut Nacht, mein liebe Herren. Ja, gut Nacht.

(c) Translation, Maya Jouravel, 1994-1999. Included with permission.

Letters to the roman friend

From Martial

Now is windy and the waves are cresting over

Fall is soon to come to change the place entirely.

Change of colors moves me, Postum, even stronger

Than a girlfriend while she's changing her attire.

Maidens comfort you but to a certain limit --

Can't go further than an elbow or a kneeline.

While apart from body, beauty is more splendid --

An embrace is as impossible as treason.

I'm sending to you, Postum-friend, some reading.

How's the capital? Soft bed and rude awakening?

How's Caesar? What's he doing? Still intriguing?

Still intriguing, I imagine, and engorging.

In my garden, I am sitting with a night-light

No maid nor mate, not even a companion

But instead of weak and mighty of this planet,

Buzzing pests in their unanimous dominion.

Here, was laid away an Asian merchant. Clever

Merchant was he -- very diligent yet decent.

He died suddenly -- malaria. To barter

Business did he come, and surely not for this one.

Next to him -- a legionnaire under a quartz grave.

In the battles, he brought fame to the Empire.

Many times could have been killed! Yet died an old brave.

Even here, there is no ordinance, my dear.

Maybe, chicken really aren't birds, my Postum,

Yet a chicken brain should rather take precautions.

An empire, if you happened to be born to,

better live in distant province, by the ocean.

Far away from Caesar, and away from tempests

No need to cringe, to rush or to be fearful,

You are saying procurators are all looters,

But I'd rather choose a looter than a slayer.

Under thunderstorm, to stay with you, hetaera, --

I agree but let us deal without haggling:

To demand sesterces from a flesh that covers

is the same as stripping roofs of their own shingle.

Are you saying that I leak? Well, where's a puddle?

Leaving puddles hasn't been among my habits.

Once you find yourself some-body for a husband,

Then you'll see him take a leak under your blankets.

Here, we've covered more than half of our life span

As an old slave, by the tavern, has just said it,

"Turning back, we look but only see old ruins".

Surely, his view is barbaric, but yet candid.

've been to hills and now busy with some flowers.

Have to find a pitcher, so to pour them water.

How's in Libya, my Postum, or wherever?

Is it possible that we are still at war there?

You remember, friend, the procurator's sister?

On the skinny side, however with those plump legs.

You have slept with her then... she became a priestess.

Priestess, Postum, and confers with the creators.

Do come here, we'll have a drink with bread and olives --

Or with plums. You'll tell me news about the nation.

In the garden you will sleep under clear heavens,

And I'll tell you how they name the constellations.

Postum, friend of yours once tendered to addition,

Soon shall reimburse deduction, his old duty...

Take the savings, which you'll find under my cushion.

Haven't got much but for funeral -- it's plenty.

On your skewbald, take a ride to the hetaeras,

Their house is right by the town limit,

Bid the price we used to pay -- for them to love us --

They should now get the same -- for their lament.

Laurel's leaves so green -- it makes your body shudder.

Wide ajar the door -- a tiny window's dusty --

Long deserted bed -- an armchair is abandoned --

Noontime sun has been absorbed by the upholstery.

With the wind, by sea point cape, a boat, is wrestling.

Roars the gulf behind the black fence of the pine trees.

On the old and wind-cracked bench -- Pliny the Elder.

And a thrush is chirping in the mane of cypress.

March 1972

(c) Translation, Maya Jouravel, 1994-1999. Included with permission.

Moscow Carol

In such an inexplicable blue,

Upon the stonework to embark,

The little ship of glowing hue

Appears in Alexander Park.

The little lamp, a yellow rose,

Arising -- ready to retreat --

Above the people it adores;

Near strangers' feet.

In such an inexplicable blue

The drunkards' hive, the loonies' team.

A tourist takes a snapshot to

Have left the town and keep no dream.

On the Ordynka street you find

A taxicab with fevered gnomes,

And dead ancestors stand behind

And lean on domes.

A poet strolls across the town

In such an inexplicable blue.

A doorman watches him looking down

And down the street and catches the flu.

An old and handsome cavalier

Moves down a lane not worth a view,

And wedding-party guests appear

In such an inexplicable blue.

Behind the river, in the haar,

As a collection of the blues --

The yellow walls reflecting far

The hopeless accent of the Jews.

You move to Sunday, to despair

(From love), to the New Year, and there

Appears a girl you cannot woo --

Never explaining why she's blue.

Then in the night the town is lost;

A train is clad in silver plush.

The pallid puff, the draught of frost

Will sheathe your face until you blush.

The honeycomb of windows fits

The smell of halva and of zest,

While Christmas Eve is carrying its

Mince pies abreast.

Watch your New Year come in a blue

Seawave across the town terrain

In such an inexplicable blue,

As if your life can start again,

As if there can be bread and light --

A lucky day -- and something's left,

As if your life can sway aright,

Once swayed aleft.

Translated by Alexey Vernitsky. Included with permission.

On the 100th Anniversary of Anna Akhmatova

The fire and the page, the hewed hairs and the swords,

The grains and the millstone, the whispers and the clatter --

God saves all that -- especially the words

Of love and pity, as His only way to utter.

The harsh pulse pounds and the blood torrent whips,

The spade knocks evenly in them, by gentle muse begotten,

For life is so unique, they from the mortal lips

Sound more clear than from the divine wad-cotton.

Oh, the great soul, I'm bowing overseas

To you, who found them, and that, your smoldering portion,

Sleeping in the homeland, which, thanks to you, at least,

Obtained the gift of speech in the deaf-mute space ocean.<BR>

Translated by Alex Sitnitsky. Included with permission.

Funeral of Bobo

Bobo is dead. But do not leave your seat!

What would explain that nothing helps to bear it.

You will not pin a butterfly with a cathedral spit --

To maim her wings. Just say, `So long...' in spirit.

The windows' squares, the arches' mournful span --

No matter how long you look around, as for

`What has befallen here...?' -- open an empty can

And answer, `That, perhaps, and no more questions, asshole!'

Bobo is dead. And Wednesday's also gone.

The streets are white, no place to sleep, to go.

Only the black, night river is to run

Not taking in the falling down snow.

Bobo is dead. The sadness fills this line.

The windows' squares, the arches. Gosh, it happened!

The frost is so sever, that if one has to die --

It should be done by a fire-shooting weapon.

So long, Bobo. Bobo, my beauty, rest.

A teardrop suits the sliced cheese. We are fussy,

It's arduous for us to follow in your path,

To stand in place, as well, would not be facile.

Your charming image, dear, I foresee,

In heat, in frost, in controversial gossips,

Will not become belittled, as it seems

In the unique perspectives built by Rossy.

III

Bobo is dead. This feeling is so bad,

It's slippery like soap, and open to be shared

With everyone. I dreamed I'm laying in the bed.

And I was there in fact. Let's pitifully tear

Off Thursday's page. There's nothing to be stored.

The list of losses should start once again from zero.

The dream without her reminds a real world

And air comes into my room by a black square.

Bobo is dead. The lips are parted as

If something tempts to say, `Oh, don't...' And then eternal,

Dark emptiness will follow your death

It's likely and much worse than biding in inferno.

You were my everything. Because of your decease,

My beautiful Bobo, you have become my nothing.

Or, rather, a small clot of voidness. But it is

Still something, if you think, annoying and harassing.

Bobo is dead. And the horizon's line

To rounded eyes is like a razor. Your place --

Neither Kiki, nor Zaza -- in this life --

Will ever take. I'm positive and helpless.

I do believe in emptiness. Don't look!

It is like Hell. But fucken worse and scary.

And the new Dante bends before a blank notebook

To seek the proper word, to find it and to tarry.

Translated by Alex Sitnitsky. Included with permission.

From nowhere with love as of -- teen Febromay

sweetheart darling or just to whom it

doesn't matter who �cause the face let's say

frankly already forgotten loomed and

no one's friend says hello from the one

of five continents which is held by cowboys.

I was fond of you more than of Him and Son

therefore removed far from you as much these two both;

in the night in the valley by slumber retained

where the small town is covered up to doorknobs by snow

in the night on the sheets being twisted with pain --

and at least wouldn't be mentioned it here below -

I am whipping the pillow by bellowing `youuu'

many seas away with the luck of pity

in the darkness your features by the flesh anew

like a crazy mirror forlornly repeating.