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On torture raised above
The pine - you, my lips' psalm:
The bitterness of ashberry, elm -
Wrathful Avessalom.
To you! May the crumbling be
Of leaves - live mercury!
First time to open the arms!
To throw the manuscript!
The swarms of green reflections...
Like ones weaving arms!
My bare-headed ones you are,
My trembling ones!
3
To swimmers, in a circle light
Having been beaten -
A flock of guardian nymphs - suddenly,
The mantles sweeping
A scroll is unrolled - In a back throw
Of foreheads and hands
In dance that suddenly will end
With blow of defense -
A long arm put on the thigh...
Drawing out, I scream...
A silver of the birches,
Alive are the streams!
4
Friends! Brotherly multitude!
You, with whose stroke is blown
The trace of earthly insult. Wood! -
Elysium mine!
A co-bottler of souls
In friendships' loud band
Having chosen soberness, day
In quiet brotherhood - I will end.
Ah, from a stomping crowd
In light sacrificial fire
Of groves! In great stillness of
Moss! In the current of firs...
The wise tiding of tree! Wood
That prophesies, of the curves
On the riffraff, here,
Is the perfect life:
Where no slavery, nor ugliness,
There, where all is its height,
There, where truth's better seen:
On the days' other side...
5
Refugees? Messengers?
Respond if you are alive!
The monks on horseback,
Having seen God in groves?
How many sandals are running?
How many buildings are flaming?
How many runners and judges
For the trees' running?
Forest! You're now a rider!
That's which people disease
Call: is the last
Convulsion of trees -
This - in a wide dress
Is a teen with nectar fed.
This - at once and with root
Uptorn is the wood!
No, another, not flakes
In a day - leafed flood
I see: spears headlong
I see: murmur of blood!
And in upturned junk heap
Flying - who could have seen?
That is Saul after David:
After his death so tan.
6
Not with paint or with brush!
Light - his kingdom, it's gray.
Here light violates color
The red leaves - a lie.
Color, with light violated.
Light - to fight color on breast.
Is not in this secret
The essence and strength
Of autumn forest?
Over the quiet creek of days
Like curtain was torn -
And behind it's scary...
Through chausible of parting
Like seeing a son -
And suddenly words rise:
Elysium and Palestine.
A stream... a draft...
Through trembling's little script -
Light, better than death -
And - connection's cut.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
The autumn grayness,
You, apotheosis of Goethe!
Much was sung here
And was unbound still more.
Thus light the gray spots:
Thus family heads - of the son
Last out of seven
The final, very last one
Into the last doors -
With rubbed-through light of arms...
(I don't trust paint! Here
Purple - is last of servants!)
Not light already:
They shimmer with some kind of light...
Not in this or other
And the connection is cut.
Thus the deserts are lighting
And - I said more than I could:
Cupolas of Elysium
And Palestine's sand.
7
That which slept without a vision -
Has touched and stands.
In strict gradualness of psalm,
With visionary mountain -
The multitudes of bodies that awaken -
Hands! Hands! Hands!
Like warriors under the hail of arrows,
Ripe for torments.
Scrolls of the falling into ash
Chausibles, see-through like nets.
The lashes of the old ones, not knowing
Shame, and hands
Covering the groin... (Of virgins!)
Of teenagers' - birds!
With a horsecart on the pipe of court!
Body till the loins
Having wheedled from coffin wraps -
Flight gray-bearded:
Now! - Transportation! - Legion!
Entire peoples
Of refugees! - On dearness and rage!
Remember! - Be! - See!
In the evening, on the hill,
Several running trees.
8
Someone is driving - to deadly victory.
Trees have the gestures of tragedy.
Jews - the secret dance! The trees
Have the quivers of mystery.
This - is a conspiracy against century:
Weight, count, time, fractions.
This - is a torn curtain:
Trees have gestures over the coffins.
Someone's riding. Sky - entry is.
Triumphal gestures have the trees.
9
With what inspiration,
With what truths of God,
Of what you sound,
The leaves' floods?
With what frantic
Sevillian secrets -
Of what you sound,
Of what forget?
What's in your fanning?
I know - you heal
Time's insult with
Eternity's chill.
But as a young genius having
Risen - you decry
With finger of absence
The beholding's lie,
That once anew, like never,
The earth to us did seem.
That underneath the eyelids
Took place conspiracies.
That with money of wonder
Not to show off - so please!
That underneath the eyelids
Took place the mysteries!
And from strength away!
And from urgency away!
Into the flood! - In prophecies
With indirect speeches.
Canopy with - leaves?
Did Seville moan?
Avalanches of leaves,
Ruins of leaves...
Gold of my hair
Comes to grayness quietly.
All took place, within the chest
All flowed, sang. Don't pity me!
Sang - in moaning pipe of land
On the edge blended distance.
God! Your design is the most
Secret: The soul did take place.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
The incombustible salt
Of my hands - will not I
Give the Phoenix's ash for tar
Of magnificence of time?
Even you have grown silver,
Satellite! To thunder and smoke,
To young graynesses of deeds -
Add the grayness of my thoughts.
Golden flower so proud,
Of your luxury don't boast:
To young graynesses of troubles
Laurel came - and citizen oak.
And henceforth, that between me and you
There are miles - having forewarned!
Why do I count myself with the mob,
That honest is my place in the world:
Under the wheels of all excess: table
Of uglies, cripples, backs with hunch...
And from now, from the roof of belltower
I announce: I love the rich!
For their root, rotten and shaky,
Growing the wound from the cradle,
For the absent-minded habit
From the pocket to pocket again.
For the quietest request of their lips,
Filfilled like a scream. That in paradise
They will not be allowed,
That they do not look in the eyes.
For their secrets - always with courier!
For - with messenger - their romantic bliss!
For the nights that to them are bound,
(And they violently drink and kiss!)
And for this that in counts, in boredom,
In gilt, in yawns, in cotton, I screech
Me the impudent they won't purchase -
I'm repeating: I love the rich!
And still, regardless of being shaved,
Of satiety, fullness (I wink - and spend!)
For some - suddenly - being beaten,
For some sometime doubting glance
Of a dog... not a rod
To the zeros? Do not weights play and rage?
And for this, that among the world's outcasts
There is not such an orphanage.
There is such foolish tale: through the eye
Of a needle a camel to pass...
For their look, that at death does wonder,
Apologizing in disease,
Like in bankruptcy... "Judged... Be glad - Yes"...
For the quiet, from lips pressed tight, to which
"I counted karats, I was the brother"
I am adding: I love the rich!
1
Poet - from afar starts a speech.
A poet - far away starts the speech.
With planets, with marks, with roundabout
Tales' hollows... between yes and nay
He even having swung from the belltower
Took out the hook... For comets' way
Is poets' way. The scattered chime of purpose -
That's his connection! Forehead up - despair!
You know that the eclipses of the poets
Are not foretold by the calendar.
He's he, who mixes cards together,
Who is deceiving count and weight,
He's he, who asks from the desktop,
Who beats with Kant over the head,
Who is like tree in its own beauty
In the stone coffin of Bastille.
He, on whose train all are late,
Whose traces have been chilled
Always... For comets' way
Is poets' way: burning and not warming.
Tearing, not growing - to break up and tear -
Your season, o the mantled curved one,
Is not foretold by a calendar!
2
There are the extras, the unneeded
That do not fit within the norm.
(Not counting in your dictionaries
To them the landfill is their home).
There are the hollow, the pushed-down,
There are the mute - like dung,
Nail - to your silken skirt hem!
Dirt from under the wheels is wrung!
There are the unseen, the imaginary:
(Sign: speck of an autumn hen!)
There are the Jobs within the world
That would have envied Job - when:
We're poets - and in rhyme with pariahs,
But from the shore thus having gone,
We argue over God with goddesses
And argue over girls with gods!
3
What should I do, blind and a stepson,
When all have fathers and have eyes,
When on anathema like embankments
Of passion! Where runny nose is the
Name of cry!
What should I do, with rib and thought
Singing! - like wire! Siberia! Sunburn!
Upon your dreams - like on the bridge!
With their weightlessness
In weights' world.
What should I do, singer and firstborn,
When gray is blackest in the world!
Where inspiration's like in thermos!
With this measurelessness in
Measures' world?!
1
You do not ever think about me!
(Tire-some!)
You think about me: the wires:
Far - lasting.
You don't complain about me, that it's pity...
Sweeter than all...
Only about one thing: the pedal:
Pain - lasting.
2
The - palm in palm:
What - for you're born?
Don't - pity: please:
Long - last - and pain.
3
Distance stretched out long with wires...
Distance and pain, is the same palm
Opening - wherefore?
Distance and pain, is the same way.
As the distance pierces, likewise
It the distance does caress.
Longer - longer - longer - longer!
The right pedal, this one is.
It's no pity to be dying
After seeing life in bliss.
Deafer - deafer - deafer - deafer:
The left pedal, this one is.
Memory's humming Kitezh -
Right! Lethean water's
Take the left: the deafener
Will out-sing the longerer.
From the plot ones, notice,
From the cast ones having tired,
Life doesn't want to live... but often
Death does not desire to die!
It demands! From all the meatless
Keys, all broken up in row.
(With left pedal they do deafen,
With right pedal they prolong...)
It clangs! Like snake out of the falseness
Of keys, broken up all the way...
Further, further, further, further,
With the right pedal they do lie!
1
Thus they listen (to the source
Listens - the mouth).
Thus they smell a flower:
Deeply - till feeling's loss!
Thus there's bottomless thirst
In the indigo air.
Thus children, in blueness of sheets,
Into the memory peer.
Thus the teenager feels
Blood - until the lotus...
Thus one falls in love:
Falls into the abyss.
2
Do not scold me for this
Dim and business-like look, friend.
Thus they gulp down the gulp:
Into depth: till feelings end.
Thus working into cloth, tailor
Sews his final attire.
Thus children whisper in whisper,
Into the cry crying.
Thus they dance... (Great
Is God - you turn around that's why!)
Thus children are quiet in silence
Crying in a cry.
Thus without bane shows itself
With a sting touched blood!
Like falling into abyss:
Thus they fall in love.
"She's on the bottom, where is mud
And seaweed... She went to sleep
In them - but there is no sleep there!"
"But I loved her,
Like forty thousand brothers
Can't love her"
"Hamlet!
She's on the bottom, where is mud:
Mud! And the final garland
Has floated on the river-side logs"
"But I loved her
Like forty thousand.."
"Fewer,
Still, than one lover.
She's on the bottom, where is mud"
"But I"
(bewildered)
"loved her?"
With what this day will end
Neither friendship nor love will know.
With each day you answer more quietly,
With each day deeper you go.
Thus, worrying over nothing -
Only branches move of a tree -
Thus into the ice crevasse -
Into the chest, that I smashed against thee!
From the treasure-chest of likenesses
Here is prediction - by guess - for thee:
You in me like in crystal coffin
Sleep - you like in deep wound in me
Sleep - tight is the icy crevasse!
Ices are jealous of their dead ones:
Finger - armor - print - and belt...
Without return and without response.
In vain you scold Helen, widows!
Not the beautiful Helen's Troy's fire!
The blueness of ice crevasses,
On whose bottom you sleep, sire...
Sleep, dreamer! With you having met
Like with Empidocles, Aetna...
Chest will not give out its dead
And to family say, it's in vain.
On the appointed meeting
I'll be late. I will come gray
Having taken spring with me.
You appointed him up high!
I will walk for years - to bitter mercury
Did not go Ophelia's taste!
I will walk through mountains - and deserts,
I will walk through souls - and hands.
The earth will live for long! Thicket -
Blood! And each droplet - creek.
But always with the stream's side
In bitter grass, Ophelia's look.
That which quaffing passion, only
Filled with mud! - On the stone, with shaft!
I have loved you highly, highly,
In the sky I have myself kept.
Early still - not to be!
Early still - not to burn!
Tenderness! Cruel lash of
Meetings from other world.
How deeply not to lean -
Bottomless vat is heaven!
O, for a love like this
It's early - without wounds!
Life lives with jealousy!
Into the earth the blood
Pours. The widow will give
Her right - for a sword?
Life lives with jealousy!
Damage to heart is blessed!
Her right for a sickle
Will give away the grass.
Secret thirst of the grass...
Every sprout: "break me down"...
Given away to the rag,
Still all the wounds are - mine!
And till a common seam -
I pour - you will not place -
It is still early for ices
Of other-worldly lands!
Those who wound up - will remain.
Further - up.
In the hour of final forgetfulness
Don't wake up.
He has no friends who is a genius
And walks at night.
In the hour of final vision
Don't gain sight.
I'm your eyes. The owl's roof
Of eyes, dear.
I will call you by the name -
Do not hear.
I'm your soul: Urania:
To gods - door.
Do not check me in the final
Melding's hour.
In some frequent lining of a note
Coddling on the sheets without fail -
Linens of a railroad are appearing,
Cutting through, the blueness of a rail!
Pushkin's: How many of them, where
It chases! (It passed - they don't sing!)
Here they all are leaving and departing,
Here they chill and here they linger still.
Here they stay. Pain like a note
Remaining... Above love all
Remaining... With wife of Lot
Like embankment have grown cold the poles...
Hour, when with despair like with loom
Sheets have been spread out - Yours!
And the that-has- now-gone-voiceless Sappho
Cries in pain like a final seamstress.
Cry unmurmuring! Cry of a swamp
Heron, knowing already... Deep
Linens of a railroad spreading out,
With a scissors cutting is the beep.
Flow apart with an unneeded dawn,
O the red unnecessary spot!
The young women each in their turn
Do aspire onto such a sheet.
They don't wait for letters,
For a letter they wait.
A shred of rag
Around a braid
Of glue. Within - a word.
And happiness. And this - is all.
Thus they don't wait for joy,
Thus they wait for the end:
A soldier's salute
And into the chest - lead
Three pieces. It's red in the eye.
And this is it. And only.
No happiness - she's old!
Wind blew - color!
The black muzzles
And the yard's square.
(The letter's square:
Of ink and spells!)
No one is too old
For sleep of death!
The letter's square.
You that loved me with the falseness
Of truth - and truth of lie,
Abroad! There is nowhere further!
You that in me placed your love!
You, that loved me for much longer
Than the time. - The right hand's stroke!
You don't love me any longer
Is the truth in six small words.
The demon in me
Is not dead but lives!
In self like in jail
In body like in bilge.
Exit is axe
From the world that is walls
(An actor mumbles,
"A stage is the world.")
And lump-legged jester
Did not act sly.
In body - like in glory.
Like in toga - in body.
Many a year!
Hold dear that you're alive!
(Only the poets
In bone - like in lie!)
We won't make merry,
Singing brothers,
In body like in cotton
Gown of a father.
We cost the better.
In heat we wilt.
In body - like in stall.
In self - like in a pot.
Transitory magnificence
We do not hold.
In body - like in morass,
In body - like in vault,
In body - like in extreme
Exile. - Wilt!
In body - like in secret,
In temples - like in a grip
Of an iron mask.
Into the gray spot - temple,
Into rut - a soldier.
Sky - with a sea we are painting you.
Like on every syllable -
That on secret peer
I turnaround,
I make myself cute.
In the shootout - scythe,
In the Christ dance - switch,
Sea - I choke you off with the sky.
Like on every poem -
On a secret screech
I am stopping,
Putting my guard up high.
In each line: You stand! In each spot
There may treasure be.
Eye! With light in you I unfold myself,
I come apart. With angst
On guitar harmony
I rebuild myself,
I cover myself.
Marriage - in dawn
Not in feather - of swan!
Marriages are altogether different!
Like on hyphen sign
That on secret sign
Brows are starting -
You suspect me yet?
Not in drunken tea
Of glory - strong's my soul.
And my exchequer is not small!
Under your finger
Like bread of the Lord
We are broken up,
We are being milled.
x x x
Brother in the songtime woe -
I am envying you.
Let it be fulfilled this way -
In separate room to die! -
How many years? Century?
Is the dream of every day.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
And not pity: little lived,
And no anguish: little gave.
He who lived in our days, lived
A lot: he who gave a song - all gave.
To live (only not newer
Than death!) here across the veins.
For some one thing this exists -
Hooks upon the ceiling.
With blocks - on forehead
Resides the laurel.
"I cannot sing"
"You will" - "Vanished, fell
(Translate into
Oatmeal!)
Sound from the chest -
Just like milk.
Empty and dry.
In full spring -
Feeling's a bitch."
"An old song!
Throw, don't confuse!"
"Better I go -
Pound a stone"
"And to sing now"
"What am I, bullflinch
In the day to sing?"
"Do not be able to,
Bird, but sing!
To spite the foe!"
"That just lines, two
I cannot parse?"
"Who ever could?!"
"Torture!" - "Endure!"
"Meadow mown down -
Gullet!" - "Wheeze:
That too is sound!"
"Business of lions
Not of wives." - "Kids:
Broken apart -
Orpheus did sing!"
"Thus in a coffin?"
"A board underneath."
"I cannot sing"
"So you sing this!"
1
That the world would not die
Without desperate men,
Be, baby Vladimir, ruler
Of world from end to end.
2
Literary - not in it is
Truth, but here - spill blood!
It comes out every seven days.
Departed - once in a hundred
Years it comes. Killed is the first
Soldier. Which, capital,
Missives to you, which
Article to you still?
Gold - to a bourgeois:
This is to us, dear.
"Bass, they say, and walks in vests.
Mayakovsky, Vladimir"...
Hey, blood-your-blood!
How to make peace with the news,
When the blood of her first
Soldier - on second page
(Of the news).
3
"In the coffin, in the usual dark suit,
in steady, rough shoes, shod with
iron, lies the greatest poet of the
Revolution." - One-day Newspaper, April 24 1920.
In the boots shod with iron
In the boots in which he took the mountain -
Not with any detour or redirection
Having reached the crossing -
Over a run of twenty years
Until they were shining, spent.
Mountain of the proletarian Sinai,
On which he as the prophet stands,
That the resident office would not meddle
In the boots - a two-foot living square -
In the boots, in which, wearing a frown,
He carried the mountain - and took - and sang - and swore -
In the boots before, without refusal
By the untilled fields of October,
In the boots - almost like water-climber:
Infantryman, speaking clearer:
In the boots of a great hike,
On the Donbass, I do fear, nails.
Of hundred ten million (State Publications)
Mountain of the grief of own people...
In which kind, I'm asking you with honor,
Of one's own, when is which year:
"Nothing of one's own in the factory!"
Burning mountain of all the peoples - here.
Thus in these - about his Rolls-Royces
Talk has not gone silent at this time -
To dead pioneers he shouted: Take formation!
In the boots - witnesses to the crime.
4
The lovers' boat broke against life.
And a bet one would not place
Upon a leader such as this.
Comrade, comrade, this your boat
From what dictionary is?
Still within the lovers' boat
Thrown one's head back - a scandal!
Razin - what here does not suit you?
Better mastered life, withal.
This novelty - medicine
Bursting, what is your faucet?
Fellow, not like proletarian
You behave, what's with you yet?
It was worth in gods and mother
Us, that - not the dawn, the blood!
The white undercoat of class
To turn over toward the end.
Like a cadet, at the Toska
From despair having shot!
Fellow! Not like Mayakovky
You're behaving, like a shah.
With a cap upon your brow
And - farewell, my dear one!
You ended as great-grand-father
Having lived as great-grand-son.
And again, like on the checkup
We will go - shame'll eat you, son:
You the Soviet-Russian Werther,
Gesture noble-Russian.
Earlier - to police station,
Now... My enemy, dear one!
There are no new lover's boats
Underneath the shining moon.
5
Like only by enemies,
In the very soul - a shot.
This today, the final temple
Is destroyed by foe of God.
Having not yet oriented,
Went to sleep, reaching the spot.
Heart began now beating, beating,
Stop, within the trace of shot.
(An abroad, within the meeting:
"Incident! What a land mine!
This means - there is a heart also?
And with our own, the same one?"
A shot - in the very spot now,
Like into the aim of market.
(Often - the left lobe
Having shaved - with wife in bed. )
Hotshot! You did not miss target!
And this for the woman - what!
And Helen a lousy creature
You will call, having thought.
By but one thing, but completely,
The Left poet surprised us so:
Only to the right and knowing
How to shoot, and left did go.
In the right - would that the lancet
Shine - and healthy is your chef.
Well, the self-same Central Singer:
A shot in the door on left!
6
The Soviet grandee,
Under full Sinod...
"Hello, Sergei!"
"Hello, Volodya!"
"Got tired?" "Just little"
"By common?" "My own yet."
"Did it shoot?" "Habitually."
"Did it burn?" "Excellent."
"Thus maybe it lived?"
"Pass in which type, here."
"Not so good, Sergei!"
"Not so good, Vladimir!
And do you remember,
How in your pop
Bass you did curse me?"
"Well, now, stop...
Thus here a boat
Is this lovers' boat!
Not from a skirt?"
"It's worse from vodka -
A bloated face.
From that time on platoon here?
Not so good, Sergei."
"Not so good, Vladimir.
And maybe - not razor -
Is worked out cleanly.
Thus beaten is card
Completely?" "It trickles."
"Apply now the plaintain"
"It's good and collodium.
Let's apply it, Sergei?"
"Let's apply, Volodya."
And what is in Russia -
The mother? "Where's it?"
"In USSR
What is new?" "They build
The parents give birth,
The harmful ones sharpen,
The publishers drive and
The writers are writing.
The new bridge is laid
And washed out with half-water.
It's all the same, Sergei!"
"It's the same, Vladimir
And the singing flock?
"People, know, winding
Our ground laurels
Like rod of the dead ones.
The old Rost
With tomorrow's lacquer.
You will not do with
Just one Pasternak here.
Let's apply the arms
To that there lack of water?
Let's apply them, Sergei?
"Let's apply, Vladimir!
Still bows to you now...
"And what's the kind, our
Lsan Alexandrovich?"
"There -angel!" "Fyodor
Kuzmich?" "On the canal:
By the red cheeks
He went." "Nikolai Gumilev?"
"On the East
(On the complete dray,
In matting bloody...)
"Still the same, Sergei"
"Still the same, Volodya.
And still this the same,
Volodya dear friend -
Let's apply the hands
Though there are no hands
Volodya." "Though there is none,
My dear brother Sergei,
Underneath this kingdom
Let's place a grenade!
And on the sunset
By us bothered
Let's place it, Sergei!"
"Let's place it, Vladimir!"
7
He destroyed many temples,
And this - more precious than all.
Accept, Lord, your deceased enemy's soul.
1
Scourge of gendarmes, god of students,
Bile of husbands and wives' sweetness,
Pushkin - in a monument's role?
In a role of a stone guest?
Bare-toothed, looking like dare,
Pushkin - in role of commander?
Critic - whining, whiner - speaking:
"Where is Pushkin's (weeping)
Sense of measure?" Feeling - having
Forgotten sea - beating
On the granite? Salty one,
Pushkin - in role of lexicon?
His two legs having stretched out
To warm, and upon the table
Having jumped before the tyrant
African man of free will -
Killing of our great-grandfathers -
Pushkin - in role of governor?
Negro can't be painted over
Can't correct it into white!
Not bad is the Russian classic,
Having once African sky
Called his own, cursed the Nieva's!
Pushkin - in role of Russia-lover?
O you, the bearded augurs!
Would have given to you the ball
He who rhymed the tsar's censorship
With the creep, and for it all
"Europe's messenger" - with...
Pushkin - in role of gravedigger?
To the jubilee of Pushkin
We will at this time give word:
Ruddier than all and tanner
Till this time in all the world,
Livelier than all and living!
Pushkin - in role of mausoleum?
By the cabins of Pushkin
You model, that're trash - themselves!
Like from shower! Like from cannon -
At the Pushkin's nightingales
Words, the flight of falcons!
Pushkin - in role of a gun!
From the scream the ears are popping:
"In a row before Pushkin!"
Where did they leave the red of lips,
Where did they leave the Pushkin's
Mutiny? Lips' cursed pleasure?
Pushkin - in the Pushkin's measure!
Having placed tomes in the bookcase -
You will bring laughter to him,
Having mixed your refugeeness
With his white insanity!
White-bloodedness of brain, blueness
Of morgue - with Negro's leer, a throat
To the seeming...
Would you, O the Copper Horseman,
On all hooves behind come leap.
Poor Vanya was a coward,
But he - is not cowardly.
He, looking in all directions -
In Tatyana's role, one's own?
What are you doing, you crows,
The pine - you, my lips' psalm:
The bitterness of ashberry, elm -
Wrathful Avessalom.
To you! May the crumbling be
Of leaves - live mercury!
First time to open the arms!
To throw the manuscript!
The swarms of green reflections...
Like ones weaving arms!
My bare-headed ones you are,
My trembling ones!
3
To swimmers, in a circle light
Having been beaten -
A flock of guardian nymphs - suddenly,
The mantles sweeping
A scroll is unrolled - In a back throw
Of foreheads and hands
In dance that suddenly will end
With blow of defense -
A long arm put on the thigh...
Drawing out, I scream...
A silver of the birches,
Alive are the streams!
4
Friends! Brotherly multitude!
You, with whose stroke is blown
The trace of earthly insult. Wood! -
Elysium mine!
A co-bottler of souls
In friendships' loud band
Having chosen soberness, day
In quiet brotherhood - I will end.
Ah, from a stomping crowd
In light sacrificial fire
Of groves! In great stillness of
Moss! In the current of firs...
The wise tiding of tree! Wood
That prophesies, of the curves
On the riffraff, here,
Is the perfect life:
Where no slavery, nor ugliness,
There, where all is its height,
There, where truth's better seen:
On the days' other side...
5
Refugees? Messengers?
Respond if you are alive!
The monks on horseback,
Having seen God in groves?
How many sandals are running?
How many buildings are flaming?
How many runners and judges
For the trees' running?
Forest! You're now a rider!
That's which people disease
Call: is the last
Convulsion of trees -
This - in a wide dress
Is a teen with nectar fed.
This - at once and with root
Uptorn is the wood!
No, another, not flakes
In a day - leafed flood
I see: spears headlong
I see: murmur of blood!
And in upturned junk heap
Flying - who could have seen?
That is Saul after David:
After his death so tan.
6
Not with paint or with brush!
Light - his kingdom, it's gray.
Here light violates color
The red leaves - a lie.
Color, with light violated.
Light - to fight color on breast.
Is not in this secret
The essence and strength
Of autumn forest?
Over the quiet creek of days
Like curtain was torn -
And behind it's scary...
Through chausible of parting
Like seeing a son -
And suddenly words rise:
Elysium and Palestine.
A stream... a draft...
Through trembling's little script -
Light, better than death -
And - connection's cut.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
The autumn grayness,
You, apotheosis of Goethe!
Much was sung here
And was unbound still more.
Thus light the gray spots:
Thus family heads - of the son
Last out of seven
The final, very last one
Into the last doors -
With rubbed-through light of arms...
(I don't trust paint! Here
Purple - is last of servants!)
Not light already:
They shimmer with some kind of light...
Not in this or other
And the connection is cut.
Thus the deserts are lighting
And - I said more than I could:
Cupolas of Elysium
And Palestine's sand.
7
That which slept without a vision -
Has touched and stands.
In strict gradualness of psalm,
With visionary mountain -
The multitudes of bodies that awaken -
Hands! Hands! Hands!
Like warriors under the hail of arrows,
Ripe for torments.
Scrolls of the falling into ash
Chausibles, see-through like nets.
The lashes of the old ones, not knowing
Shame, and hands
Covering the groin... (Of virgins!)
Of teenagers' - birds!
With a horsecart on the pipe of court!
Body till the loins
Having wheedled from coffin wraps -
Flight gray-bearded:
Now! - Transportation! - Legion!
Entire peoples
Of refugees! - On dearness and rage!
Remember! - Be! - See!
In the evening, on the hill,
Several running trees.
8
Someone is driving - to deadly victory.
Trees have the gestures of tragedy.
Jews - the secret dance! The trees
Have the quivers of mystery.
This - is a conspiracy against century:
Weight, count, time, fractions.
This - is a torn curtain:
Trees have gestures over the coffins.
Someone's riding. Sky - entry is.
Triumphal gestures have the trees.
9
With what inspiration,
With what truths of God,
Of what you sound,
The leaves' floods?
With what frantic
Sevillian secrets -
Of what you sound,
Of what forget?
What's in your fanning?
I know - you heal
Time's insult with
Eternity's chill.
But as a young genius having
Risen - you decry
With finger of absence
The beholding's lie,
That once anew, like never,
The earth to us did seem.
That underneath the eyelids
Took place conspiracies.
That with money of wonder
Not to show off - so please!
That underneath the eyelids
Took place the mysteries!
And from strength away!
And from urgency away!
Into the flood! - In prophecies
With indirect speeches.
Canopy with - leaves?
Did Seville moan?
Avalanches of leaves,
Ruins of leaves...
x x x
Gold of my hair
Comes to grayness quietly.
All took place, within the chest
All flowed, sang. Don't pity me!
Sang - in moaning pipe of land
On the edge blended distance.
God! Your design is the most
Secret: The soul did take place.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
The incombustible salt
Of my hands - will not I
Give the Phoenix's ash for tar
Of magnificence of time?
Even you have grown silver,
Satellite! To thunder and smoke,
To young graynesses of deeds -
Add the grayness of my thoughts.
Golden flower so proud,
Of your luxury don't boast:
To young graynesses of troubles
Laurel came - and citizen oak.
Praise to the Rich
And henceforth, that between me and you
There are miles - having forewarned!
Why do I count myself with the mob,
That honest is my place in the world:
Under the wheels of all excess: table
Of uglies, cripples, backs with hunch...
And from now, from the roof of belltower
I announce: I love the rich!
For their root, rotten and shaky,
Growing the wound from the cradle,
For the absent-minded habit
From the pocket to pocket again.
For the quietest request of their lips,
Filfilled like a scream. That in paradise
They will not be allowed,
That they do not look in the eyes.
For their secrets - always with courier!
For - with messenger - their romantic bliss!
For the nights that to them are bound,
(And they violently drink and kiss!)
And for this that in counts, in boredom,
In gilt, in yawns, in cotton, I screech
Me the impudent they won't purchase -
I'm repeating: I love the rich!
And still, regardless of being shaved,
Of satiety, fullness (I wink - and spend!)
For some - suddenly - being beaten,
For some sometime doubting glance
Of a dog... not a rod
To the zeros? Do not weights play and rage?
And for this, that among the world's outcasts
There is not such an orphanage.
There is such foolish tale: through the eye
Of a needle a camel to pass...
For their look, that at death does wonder,
Apologizing in disease,
Like in bankruptcy... "Judged... Be glad - Yes"...
For the quiet, from lips pressed tight, to which
"I counted karats, I was the brother"
I am adding: I love the rich!
Poets
1
Poet - from afar starts a speech.
A poet - far away starts the speech.
With planets, with marks, with roundabout
Tales' hollows... between yes and nay
He even having swung from the belltower
Took out the hook... For comets' way
Is poets' way. The scattered chime of purpose -
That's his connection! Forehead up - despair!
You know that the eclipses of the poets
Are not foretold by the calendar.
He's he, who mixes cards together,
Who is deceiving count and weight,
He's he, who asks from the desktop,
Who beats with Kant over the head,
Who is like tree in its own beauty
In the stone coffin of Bastille.
He, on whose train all are late,
Whose traces have been chilled
Always... For comets' way
Is poets' way: burning and not warming.
Tearing, not growing - to break up and tear -
Your season, o the mantled curved one,
Is not foretold by a calendar!
2
There are the extras, the unneeded
That do not fit within the norm.
(Not counting in your dictionaries
To them the landfill is their home).
There are the hollow, the pushed-down,
There are the mute - like dung,
Nail - to your silken skirt hem!
Dirt from under the wheels is wrung!
There are the unseen, the imaginary:
(Sign: speck of an autumn hen!)
There are the Jobs within the world
That would have envied Job - when:
We're poets - and in rhyme with pariahs,
But from the shore thus having gone,
We argue over God with goddesses
And argue over girls with gods!
3
What should I do, blind and a stepson,
When all have fathers and have eyes,
When on anathema like embankments
Of passion! Where runny nose is the
Name of cry!
What should I do, with rib and thought
Singing! - like wire! Siberia! Sunburn!
Upon your dreams - like on the bridge!
With their weightlessness
In weights' world.
What should I do, singer and firstborn,
When gray is blackest in the world!
Where inspiration's like in thermos!
With this measurelessness in
Measures' world?!
Words and Meanings
1
You do not ever think about me!
(Tire-some!)
You think about me: the wires:
Far - lasting.
You don't complain about me, that it's pity...
Sweeter than all...
Only about one thing: the pedal:
Pain - lasting.
2
The - palm in palm:
What - for you're born?
Don't - pity: please:
Long - last - and pain.
3
Distance stretched out long with wires...
Distance and pain, is the same palm
Opening - wherefore?
Distance and pain, is the same way.
Pedals
As the distance pierces, likewise
It the distance does caress.
Longer - longer - longer - longer!
The right pedal, this one is.
It's no pity to be dying
After seeing life in bliss.
Deafer - deafer - deafer - deafer:
The left pedal, this one is.
Memory's humming Kitezh -
Right! Lethean water's
Take the left: the deafener
Will out-sing the longerer.
From the plot ones, notice,
From the cast ones having tired,
Life doesn't want to live... but often
Death does not desire to die!
It demands! From all the meatless
Keys, all broken up in row.
(With left pedal they do deafen,
With right pedal they prolong...)
It clangs! Like snake out of the falseness
Of keys, broken up all the way...
Further, further, further, further,
With the right pedal they do lie!
Thus they listen..
1
Thus they listen (to the source
Listens - the mouth).
Thus they smell a flower:
Deeply - till feeling's loss!
Thus there's bottomless thirst
In the indigo air.
Thus children, in blueness of sheets,
Into the memory peer.
Thus the teenager feels
Blood - until the lotus...
Thus one falls in love:
Falls into the abyss.
2
Do not scold me for this
Dim and business-like look, friend.
Thus they gulp down the gulp:
Into depth: till feelings end.
Thus working into cloth, tailor
Sews his final attire.
Thus children whisper in whisper,
Into the cry crying.
Thus they dance... (Great
Is God - you turn around that's why!)
Thus children are quiet in silence
Crying in a cry.
Thus without bane shows itself
With a sting touched blood!
Like falling into abyss:
Thus they fall in love.
Dialogue of Hamlet with his Conscience
"She's on the bottom, where is mud
And seaweed... She went to sleep
In them - but there is no sleep there!"
"But I loved her,
Like forty thousand brothers
Can't love her"
"Hamlet!
She's on the bottom, where is mud:
Mud! And the final garland
Has floated on the river-side logs"
"But I loved her
Like forty thousand.."
"Fewer,
Still, than one lover.
She's on the bottom, where is mud"
"But I"
(bewildered)
"loved her?"
Crevasse
With what this day will end
Neither friendship nor love will know.
With each day you answer more quietly,
With each day deeper you go.
Thus, worrying over nothing -
Only branches move of a tree -
Thus into the ice crevasse -
Into the chest, that I smashed against thee!
From the treasure-chest of likenesses
Here is prediction - by guess - for thee:
You in me like in crystal coffin
Sleep - you like in deep wound in me
Sleep - tight is the icy crevasse!
Ices are jealous of their dead ones:
Finger - armor - print - and belt...
Without return and without response.
In vain you scold Helen, widows!
Not the beautiful Helen's Troy's fire!
The blueness of ice crevasses,
On whose bottom you sleep, sire...
Sleep, dreamer! With you having met
Like with Empidocles, Aetna...
Chest will not give out its dead
And to family say, it's in vain.
x x x
On the appointed meeting
I'll be late. I will come gray
Having taken spring with me.
You appointed him up high!
I will walk for years - to bitter mercury
Did not go Ophelia's taste!
I will walk through mountains - and deserts,
I will walk through souls - and hands.
The earth will live for long! Thicket -
Blood! And each droplet - creek.
But always with the stream's side
In bitter grass, Ophelia's look.
That which quaffing passion, only
Filled with mud! - On the stone, with shaft!
I have loved you highly, highly,
In the sky I have myself kept.
x x x
Early still - not to be!
Early still - not to burn!
Tenderness! Cruel lash of
Meetings from other world.
How deeply not to lean -
Bottomless vat is heaven!
O, for a love like this
It's early - without wounds!
Life lives with jealousy!
Into the earth the blood
Pours. The widow will give
Her right - for a sword?
Life lives with jealousy!
Damage to heart is blessed!
Her right for a sickle
Will give away the grass.
Secret thirst of the grass...
Every sprout: "break me down"...
Given away to the rag,
Still all the wounds are - mine!
And till a common seam -
I pour - you will not place -
It is still early for ices
Of other-worldly lands!
Moon - to Sleepwalker
Those who wound up - will remain.
Further - up.
In the hour of final forgetfulness
Don't wake up.
He has no friends who is a genius
And walks at night.
In the hour of final vision
Don't gain sight.
I'm your eyes. The owl's roof
Of eyes, dear.
I will call you by the name -
Do not hear.
I'm your soul: Urania:
To gods - door.
Do not check me in the final
Melding's hour.
Rails
In some frequent lining of a note
Coddling on the sheets without fail -
Linens of a railroad are appearing,
Cutting through, the blueness of a rail!
Pushkin's: How many of them, where
It chases! (It passed - they don't sing!)
Here they all are leaving and departing,
Here they chill and here they linger still.
Here they stay. Pain like a note
Remaining... Above love all
Remaining... With wife of Lot
Like embankment have grown cold the poles...
Hour, when with despair like with loom
Sheets have been spread out - Yours!
And the that-has- now-gone-voiceless Sappho
Cries in pain like a final seamstress.
Cry unmurmuring! Cry of a swamp
Heron, knowing already... Deep
Linens of a railroad spreading out,
With a scissors cutting is the beep.
Flow apart with an unneeded dawn,
O the red unnecessary spot!
The young women each in their turn
Do aspire onto such a sheet.
Letter
They don't wait for letters,
For a letter they wait.
A shred of rag
Around a braid
Of glue. Within - a word.
And happiness. And this - is all.
Thus they don't wait for joy,
Thus they wait for the end:
A soldier's salute
And into the chest - lead
Three pieces. It's red in the eye.
And this is it. And only.
No happiness - she's old!
Wind blew - color!
The black muzzles
And the yard's square.
(The letter's square:
Of ink and spells!)
No one is too old
For sleep of death!
The letter's square.
x x x
You that loved me with the falseness
Of truth - and truth of lie,
Abroad! There is nowhere further!
You that in me placed your love!
You, that loved me for much longer
Than the time. - The right hand's stroke!
You don't love me any longer
Is the truth in six small words.
x x x
The demon in me
Is not dead but lives!
In self like in jail
In body like in bilge.
Exit is axe
From the world that is walls
(An actor mumbles,
"A stage is the world.")
And lump-legged jester
Did not act sly.
In body - like in glory.
Like in toga - in body.
Many a year!
Hold dear that you're alive!
(Only the poets
In bone - like in lie!)
We won't make merry,
Singing brothers,
In body like in cotton
Gown of a father.
We cost the better.
In heat we wilt.
In body - like in stall.
In self - like in a pot.
Transitory magnificence
We do not hold.
In body - like in morass,
In body - like in vault,
In body - like in extreme
Exile. - Wilt!
In body - like in secret,
In temples - like in a grip
Of an iron mask.
x x x
Into the gray spot - temple,
Into rut - a soldier.
Sky - with a sea we are painting you.
Like on every syllable -
That on secret peer
I turnaround,
I make myself cute.
In the shootout - scythe,
In the Christ dance - switch,
Sea - I choke you off with the sky.
Like on every poem -
On a secret screech
I am stopping,
Putting my guard up high.
In each line: You stand! In each spot
There may treasure be.
Eye! With light in you I unfold myself,
I come apart. With angst
On guitar harmony
I rebuild myself,
I cover myself.
Marriage - in dawn
Not in feather - of swan!
Marriages are altogether different!
Like on hyphen sign
That on secret sign
Brows are starting -
You suspect me yet?
Not in drunken tea
Of glory - strong's my soul.
And my exchequer is not small!
Under your finger
Like bread of the Lord
We are broken up,
We are being milled.
x x x
Brother in the songtime woe -
I am envying you.
Let it be fulfilled this way -
In separate room to die! -
How many years? Century?
Is the dream of every day.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
And not pity: little lived,
And no anguish: little gave.
He who lived in our days, lived
A lot: he who gave a song - all gave.
To live (only not newer
Than death!) here across the veins.
For some one thing this exists -
Hooks upon the ceiling.
Conversation with a Genius
With blocks - on forehead
Resides the laurel.
"I cannot sing"
"You will" - "Vanished, fell
(Translate into
Oatmeal!)
Sound from the chest -
Just like milk.
Empty and dry.
In full spring -
Feeling's a bitch."
"An old song!
Throw, don't confuse!"
"Better I go -
Pound a stone"
"And to sing now"
"What am I, bullflinch
In the day to sing?"
"Do not be able to,
Bird, but sing!
To spite the foe!"
"That just lines, two
I cannot parse?"
"Who ever could?!"
"Torture!" - "Endure!"
"Meadow mown down -
Gullet!" - "Wheeze:
That too is sound!"
"Business of lions
Not of wives." - "Kids:
Broken apart -
Orpheus did sing!"
"Thus in a coffin?"
"A board underneath."
"I cannot sing"
"So you sing this!"
To Mayakovsky
1
That the world would not die
Without desperate men,
Be, baby Vladimir, ruler
Of world from end to end.
2
Literary - not in it is
Truth, but here - spill blood!
It comes out every seven days.
Departed - once in a hundred
Years it comes. Killed is the first
Soldier. Which, capital,
Missives to you, which
Article to you still?
Gold - to a bourgeois:
This is to us, dear.
"Bass, they say, and walks in vests.
Mayakovsky, Vladimir"...
Hey, blood-your-blood!
How to make peace with the news,
When the blood of her first
Soldier - on second page
(Of the news).
3
"In the coffin, in the usual dark suit,
in steady, rough shoes, shod with
iron, lies the greatest poet of the
Revolution." - One-day Newspaper, April 24 1920.
In the boots shod with iron
In the boots in which he took the mountain -
Not with any detour or redirection
Having reached the crossing -
Over a run of twenty years
Until they were shining, spent.
Mountain of the proletarian Sinai,
On which he as the prophet stands,
That the resident office would not meddle
In the boots - a two-foot living square -
In the boots, in which, wearing a frown,
He carried the mountain - and took - and sang - and swore -
In the boots before, without refusal
By the untilled fields of October,
In the boots - almost like water-climber:
Infantryman, speaking clearer:
In the boots of a great hike,
On the Donbass, I do fear, nails.
Of hundred ten million (State Publications)
Mountain of the grief of own people...
In which kind, I'm asking you with honor,
Of one's own, when is which year:
"Nothing of one's own in the factory!"
Burning mountain of all the peoples - here.
Thus in these - about his Rolls-Royces
Talk has not gone silent at this time -
To dead pioneers he shouted: Take formation!
In the boots - witnesses to the crime.
4
The lovers' boat broke against life.
And a bet one would not place
Upon a leader such as this.
Comrade, comrade, this your boat
From what dictionary is?
Still within the lovers' boat
Thrown one's head back - a scandal!
Razin - what here does not suit you?
Better mastered life, withal.
This novelty - medicine
Bursting, what is your faucet?
Fellow, not like proletarian
You behave, what's with you yet?
It was worth in gods and mother
Us, that - not the dawn, the blood!
The white undercoat of class
To turn over toward the end.
Like a cadet, at the Toska
From despair having shot!
Fellow! Not like Mayakovky
You're behaving, like a shah.
With a cap upon your brow
And - farewell, my dear one!
You ended as great-grand-father
Having lived as great-grand-son.
And again, like on the checkup
We will go - shame'll eat you, son:
You the Soviet-Russian Werther,
Gesture noble-Russian.
Earlier - to police station,
Now... My enemy, dear one!
There are no new lover's boats
Underneath the shining moon.
5
Like only by enemies,
In the very soul - a shot.
This today, the final temple
Is destroyed by foe of God.
Having not yet oriented,
Went to sleep, reaching the spot.
Heart began now beating, beating,
Stop, within the trace of shot.
(An abroad, within the meeting:
"Incident! What a land mine!
This means - there is a heart also?
And with our own, the same one?"
A shot - in the very spot now,
Like into the aim of market.
(Often - the left lobe
Having shaved - with wife in bed. )
Hotshot! You did not miss target!
And this for the woman - what!
And Helen a lousy creature
You will call, having thought.
By but one thing, but completely,
The Left poet surprised us so:
Only to the right and knowing
How to shoot, and left did go.
In the right - would that the lancet
Shine - and healthy is your chef.
Well, the self-same Central Singer:
A shot in the door on left!
6
The Soviet grandee,
Under full Sinod...
"Hello, Sergei!"
"Hello, Volodya!"
"Got tired?" "Just little"
"By common?" "My own yet."
"Did it shoot?" "Habitually."
"Did it burn?" "Excellent."
"Thus maybe it lived?"
"Pass in which type, here."
"Not so good, Sergei!"
"Not so good, Vladimir!
And do you remember,
How in your pop
Bass you did curse me?"
"Well, now, stop...
Thus here a boat
Is this lovers' boat!
Not from a skirt?"
"It's worse from vodka -
A bloated face.
From that time on platoon here?
Not so good, Sergei."
"Not so good, Vladimir.
And maybe - not razor -
Is worked out cleanly.
Thus beaten is card
Completely?" "It trickles."
"Apply now the plaintain"
"It's good and collodium.
Let's apply it, Sergei?"
"Let's apply, Volodya."
And what is in Russia -
The mother? "Where's it?"
"In USSR
What is new?" "They build
The parents give birth,
The harmful ones sharpen,
The publishers drive and
The writers are writing.
The new bridge is laid
And washed out with half-water.
It's all the same, Sergei!"
"It's the same, Vladimir
And the singing flock?
"People, know, winding
Our ground laurels
Like rod of the dead ones.
The old Rost
With tomorrow's lacquer.
You will not do with
Just one Pasternak here.
Let's apply the arms
To that there lack of water?
Let's apply them, Sergei?
"Let's apply, Vladimir!
Still bows to you now...
"And what's the kind, our
Lsan Alexandrovich?"
"There -angel!" "Fyodor
Kuzmich?" "On the canal:
By the red cheeks
He went." "Nikolai Gumilev?"
"On the East
(On the complete dray,
In matting bloody...)
"Still the same, Sergei"
"Still the same, Volodya.
And still this the same,
Volodya dear friend -
Let's apply the hands
Though there are no hands
Volodya." "Though there is none,
My dear brother Sergei,
Underneath this kingdom
Let's place a grenade!
And on the sunset
By us bothered
Let's place it, Sergei!"
"Let's place it, Vladimir!"
7
He destroyed many temples,
And this - more precious than all.
Accept, Lord, your deceased enemy's soul.
Poems to Pushkin
1
Scourge of gendarmes, god of students,
Bile of husbands and wives' sweetness,
Pushkin - in a monument's role?
In a role of a stone guest?
Bare-toothed, looking like dare,
Pushkin - in role of commander?
Critic - whining, whiner - speaking:
"Where is Pushkin's (weeping)
Sense of measure?" Feeling - having
Forgotten sea - beating
On the granite? Salty one,
Pushkin - in role of lexicon?
His two legs having stretched out
To warm, and upon the table
Having jumped before the tyrant
African man of free will -
Killing of our great-grandfathers -
Pushkin - in role of governor?
Negro can't be painted over
Can't correct it into white!
Not bad is the Russian classic,
Having once African sky
Called his own, cursed the Nieva's!
Pushkin - in role of Russia-lover?
O you, the bearded augurs!
Would have given to you the ball
He who rhymed the tsar's censorship
With the creep, and for it all
"Europe's messenger" - with...
Pushkin - in role of gravedigger?
To the jubilee of Pushkin
We will at this time give word:
Ruddier than all and tanner
Till this time in all the world,
Livelier than all and living!
Pushkin - in role of mausoleum?
By the cabins of Pushkin
You model, that're trash - themselves!
Like from shower! Like from cannon -
At the Pushkin's nightingales
Words, the flight of falcons!
Pushkin - in role of a gun!
From the scream the ears are popping:
"In a row before Pushkin!"
Where did they leave the red of lips,
Where did they leave the Pushkin's
Mutiny? Lips' cursed pleasure?
Pushkin - in the Pushkin's measure!
Having placed tomes in the bookcase -
You will bring laughter to him,
Having mixed your refugeeness
With his white insanity!
White-bloodedness of brain, blueness
Of morgue - with Negro's leer, a throat
To the seeming...
Would you, O the Copper Horseman,
On all hooves behind come leap.
Poor Vanya was a coward,
But he - is not cowardly.
He, looking in all directions -
In Tatyana's role, one's own?
What are you doing, you crows,