by Vera Pavlova
of my best dreams.
When I caress him, I know:
a kiss is preverbal,
a word is a kiss’s junior.
22
Enough painkilling, heal.
Enough cajoling, command,
even if your fiery joys
mean endless inequality
and melt our vessels
that are dispensable.
Enough rehashing, create.
Enough lying to the sick:
they will not get well.
23
Mom was an axiom.
Dad was a theorem.
I was a sleeping beauty
in the cradle of home.
The cradle has capsized.
Now the end is the means.
Cradlewrecked beauty, keep an eye
on your mother who is an infant again.
24
Why do I recite my poems by heart?
Because I write them by heart,
because I know that kind of spleen
by heart. But I lie to the pen,
not daring to describe how I ambled
along the distant ramparts of love,
barefoot, wearing a birthday suit:
the placental slime and blood.
25
I ought to remember: I was four,
she was two months and twenty days.
My sister-death is still in her grave.
I know nothing of her.
Maybe that is why in each moment of joy
an immense grief lurks,
as if I were sitting at an empty crib,
my gown wet with milk.
26
Those who are asleep in the earth
have an avian sense of the way.
Gone, they sleep with shoes on,
ready to rise and go
to the pink, dispensable,
barefooted insomniacs
who had laced up for them
the last pair of shoes.
27
Immortal: neither dead nor alive.
Immortality is fatal.
Let us embrace. Your arms are
the sleeves of a straitjacket,
a life vest to stay afloat.
Lyrical poets are cursed:
a caress is always firsthand,
a word rarely.
28
He gave me life as a gift.
What can I give in return?
My poems.
I have nothing else.
But then, are they mine?
This is the way, as a child,
I would give birthday cards
to my mother: I chose them,
and paid with my father’s money.
29
The two are in love and happy.
He:
“When you are not here,
it feels as though you
had just stepped out
and are in a room next door.”
She:
“When you step out
and are in a room next door,
it feels as though
you do not exist anymore.”
30
Sprawling
after love:
“Look,
the ceiling is
all covered with stars!”
“And maybe
on one of them
there is life …”
31
Begged him: do not fall asleep!
But he did, and in the dark of the night
loneliness took hold of me, like an incubus.
Furious and rough was the onslaught
of unchaste hands: this is the way
a slave ravishes his master’s wife,
a soldier rapes a schoolgirl.
—I’ll tell my husband!
—You’re lying.
—I’ll call to him right now!
—You’re raving.
You will call to no one.
You have no one to call.
32
The hush of the combat zone.
On my back, alone,
I feel your seed dying in me,
feel its fear, its wish to live on …
I wonder if I can carry
so many deaths inside me,
as I nurture
my own?
33
Lay down.
Embraced.
Could not decide: would I rather
sleep or sleep with him?
Afterward could not decide
what it was:
was I sleeping?
Were we?
Or the one and the other?
34
Perhaps when our bodies throb and rub
against each other, they produce a sound
inaudible to us but heard up there, in the clouds and higher,
by those who can no longer hear common sounds …
Or, maybe, this is how He wants to check by ear: are we still intact?
No cracks in mortal vessels? And to this end He bangs
men against women?
35
I do not mind being away from you.
That is not what the problem is.
You will step out to get cigarettes,
will come back, and realize I have aged.
Lord, what a pitiful,
tedious pantomime!
A click of a lighter in the dark,
one puff, and I am no longer loved.
36
To converse with the greats
by trying their blindfolds on;
to correspond with books
by rewriting them;
to edit holy edicts,
and at the midnight hour
to talk with the clock by tapping a wall
in the solitary confinement of the universe.
37
An opaque, gentle, vulnerable day,
as if it had been making love all night,
a day when the past has no bitter taste,
when the future retreats without a fight:
the seventh day after a thousand-and-one nights.
… In the morning Scheherazade opened the door,
and three sons stood before the King’s eyes.
But to me this tale is the least credible of all.
38
Good-bye, my dear!
The bugles call.
I will kiss on the lips
the mirror in your hall.
And on the cheek. And lest I
not survive
this vicious minute, also
the handle of the closing door.
39
I have wasted such a love
that surely I am bound for hell.
With my new, proxy love
no gate in hell will let me pass.
I have ripped so many pillows,
and now, for some winters to come,
will be filling the caverns of flesh
with your body. Love, a failure all around,
a flaw in the shroud of days.
… will be filling the howling caverns of mind
with your heavenly flesh.
40
Sex, the sign language of the deaf and mute,
a confession of love by the mute to the blind.
Do we not know the word love?
Love. But the mouth is sealed,
the eyes shut. My forearm is touching
the childlike back of your head.
The blind is tender. The mute is ardent.
And the sign of accord, in unison: a cloudburst!
41
If only I knew from what tongue
your I love you has been translated,
if I could find the original,
consult the dictionary
to be sure the rendition is exact:
the translator is not at fault!
42
I am in love, hence free to live
by heart, to ad-lib as I caress.
A soul is light
when full,
heavy when vacuous.
My soul is light. She is not afraid
to dance the agony alone,
for I was born wearing your shirt,
will come from the dead with that shirt on.
43
Multiplying in a column M by F
do we get one or two as a result?
May the body stay glued to the soul,
may the soul fear the body.
Do I ask too much? I only wish
the crucible of tenderness would melt
memories, and I would sleep, my cheek
pressed against your back, as on a motorbike …
44
The journey will be long.
Let us lie down, old friend.
First loves come by the dozen,
the last love is but one.
May the summer last
as a prison term
of farewell delights,
caresses on the doorstep.
45
We are rich: we have nothing to lose.
We are old: we have nowhere to rush.
We shall fluff the pillows of the past,
poke the embers of the days to come,
talk about what means the most
as the indolent daylight fades;
we shall lay to rest our undying dead:
I shall bury you, you will bury me.
46
When the very last grief
deadens all our pain,
I will follow you there
on the very next train,
not because I lack strength
to ponder the end result,
but maybe you forgot to bring
pills, a necktie, razor blades …
47
Should not regard, but I do:
a beggar rummaging in the dump,
two gays smooching on the bench,
a wino with blood on his shirt,
the drooping penis of an old man waiting for a trickle …
Should not regard. But I do.
48
Love, a Sisyphus laboring
to silence anxieties.
Let me wear your last name,
I promise not to soil it.
Not for the sake of decency,
not for any fringe benefits,
but to be more graceful and prettier
on holidays, at balls, going out.
49
Any housecoat would do,
but the seamstress cuts
the wedding gown
out of sea foam.
Come, undo my braid.
No sister’s foot can fit
Cinderella’s sandals
of cinders made.
50
I have brushed my teeth.
This day and I are even.
51
A Draft of a Marriage Contract
… if necessary, the books shall be divided as follows:
you get the odd, I get the even pages;
“the books” are understood to mean the ones we used to read aloud
together, when we would interrupt our reading for a kiss,
and would get back to the book after half an hour …
52
A weight on my back,
a light in my womb.
Stay longer in me,
take root.
When you are on top of me,
I feel triumphant and proud,
as if I were carrying you
out of a city under siege.
53
Armpits smell of linden blossom,
lilacs give a whiff of ink.
If we could only wage lovemaking
all day long without end,
love so detailed and elastic
that when nightfall came,
we would exchange each other
like prisoners of war, five times, no less!
54
Man to woman is homeland.
Woman to man is a way.
How much way have you covered!
Dear, get some rest:
here is a chest, lean your head;
here is a heart, camp out;
and we shall evenly share
the dry residue of griefs.
55
Memory keeps nothing unnecessary
or superfluous.
How much of your past
am I still to go through?
Taking dreams for memories,
I stroke the sleeper’s head.
A secret poll. The future
comes in last.
56
Envy not singers and mimes,
do not ravish the ailing words.
The adjective beloved
embraces all other adjectives,
verbs, nouns,
pronouns …
Poor Logos, naked and starved,
pining in admiration!
57
Inseparable: the parrot and its mirror,
Narcissus and his stream.
Here, I have made duplicate keys
to Eden, had the white dress altered.
Inseparable: Robinson Crusoe and Friday,
the dots in the umlaut,
me and you, my Sunday.
58
The serenade of a car siren
under a window gone dark.
Anything but betrayal!
Let us stop ears with wax,
tie the daredevil to the woman
as to a mast … The sleep,
restless and moist.
The arm goes numb.
59
Writing down verses, I got
a paper cut on my palm.
The cut extended my life line
by nearly one-fourth.
60
Teeth dull, veins collapsed,
heels worn down.
We are young as long as
our parents are young.
Dry is the riverbed where milk and honey,
white and amber, had run.
In the hospital, comb your mother’s hair,
clip the yellow nails.
61
Bathe me, birth me from foam,
cover me, swathe me in hugs.
Paradise is where
nothing can ever change.
You’re crying? —No, a speck in the eye.
You’re crying? —No, too much reading.
Hell is where there is no way
you can ever change.
62
You are, my dear,
a wall of stone:
to sing or howl
behind,
to bash my head on.
63
A tentative bio:
caught fireflies,
read till dawn,
fell in love with weirdos,
cried buckets of tears
for reasons unknown,
birthed two daughters
by seven men.
64
I walk the tightrope.
A kid on each arm
for balance.
65
Old age will come, will arrange books
in alphabetical order, will sort out photos and negatives.
With a head shake: “How meager the heritage of the most gifted.”
With a shrug: “Still, they must have done their best.”
Wrapping a shawl tighter: “Incredible: any man that comes along
can deserve the title ‘darling’!”
With a toothless grin: “How lovely they look now,
the rejected photos never put into albums!”
66
A Remedy for Insomnia
Not sheep coming down the hills,
not cracks on the ceiling—
count the ones you loved,
the former tenants of dreams
who would keep you awake,
once meant the world to you,
rocked you in their arms,
those who loved you …
Yo
u will fall asleep, by dawn, in tears.
67
Eyes of mine,
why so sad?
Am I not cheerful?
Words of mine,
why so rough?
Am I not gentle?
Deeds of mine,
why so silly?
Am I not wise?
Friends of mine,
why so dead?
Am I not strong?
68
A cake of soap, a length of rope,
a chair to hang socks on.
Death from depression seems
a bit ridiculous.
Starless is the abyss,
dark the water’s depth.
Too late for me
to have died young.
69
The sleeping are no mates for the crying,
the crying cannot judge those asleep.
How quickly you succumb to slumbers,
how blissfully, as I lie crying
next to you, hiding in the pillow
and saving for a rainy day
the lullaby to mourn the one
who had fallen asleep before I did.
70
“If you want, we can part with a smile,
or you can cry a little, if you want.”
The sole profession in the world
for men only: the executioner.
Has all been properly done:
the verdict duly announced,
the scaffold set nice and comfy?
Is the ax razor sharp?
