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

    1

    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.

    2

    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.

    3

    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.

    4

    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

    1

    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.

    2

    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.

    3

    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.

    4

    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.

    5

    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.

    6

    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

    I

    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.

    II

    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.

    IV

    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.

    Translated by Alex Sitnitsky. Included with permission.