by Vera Pavlova
71
Self-Portrait in Profile
I
am
the one
who wakes up
on your
left.
72
At last you and I are one,
together until the end.
Penelope’s cloth came in handy
for the wedding gown,
napkins, bedsheets, hankies,
with enough left for Odysseus
to make a sail.
73
A torture: writing a rough draft
of what came as a fair copy.
The milky wholeness is gone.
The waxy ripeness is here.
I take the accursed apple,
the one that deprives us of peace,
nibble on it, do not swallow,
keep the bite behind my cheek.
74
We lay down, and the pain let up.
We embraced, and the pain let go:
no more scalding regrets,
no scorching remorse
that oppressed the soul,
that weighed like a stone on the heart.
You, on top of me, heavy, immense,
and I, feeling so light.
75
A caress over the threshold
of sleep. Asleep? Half asleep?
We are ignorant of vice:
blind, entwined, content,
our bodies cling tight
to each other
without our knowledge,
ignorant of the evil.
76
Am I lovely? Of course!
Breathlessly I taste
the subtle compliment
of a handmade caress.
Chop me into tiny bits,
caress and tame my soul,
that godly swallow
you love to no end.
77
Where are we? On the sky’s
seventh floor. Above seven clouds
you are sewing the soul to the flesh
with strong manly stitches
that can neither be cut nor torn.
Inseparable, as you and I:
the light vibrant flesh,
the vibrant light soul.
78
Basked in the sun,
listened to birds,
licked off raindrops,
and only in flight
the leaf saw the tree
and grasped
what it had been.
79
The matted lashes sprinkled
with pollen from Eden’s tree.
Your face: the sun.
Mine: a sunflower.
80
Snapshots from Memory
I
The golden lies of May:
that nature favors me,
the sun is for me alone,
like a reading light on the plane.
Whenever I wish, I press
a button, and browse at will
through some worthless magazine
on a flight to you. And soon will land.
II
Pellets of sunburned skin,
a love bite from a gnat
next to my nipple. Eve’s dress
must have been sewn for me.
An ant clambers up my arm,
a dragonfly lands on my back …
Stocking up summer for winter,
I know: the supply will not last.
III
A lonesome crow
croaks in the dusk.
The wind and nettles play cards;
the deck is marked.
A drinking binge next door.
An old man in the drizzling rain
carries a coat to the dump:
a woman’s coat, warm, heavy cloth, hardly worn.
IV
A box for useless scrap.
A compost dump.
A puddle covered with grates
filched from the graveyard.
A bunch of frisky guys
on the way to a dance.
A scarecrow crucified
for crows to laugh at.
V
Torment: the homeland.
Happiness: a foreign land.
Patriotism: a congenital trauma.
The tears of a drunken gent
calling out to a prostitute:
“Hey, mama!”
Her grimace.
Nostalgia: craving pain.
… went to the movies with classmates,
came home, found his mother
hanging in the hallway.
VI
Picking a sleepy kid
off the potty at night:
the kid’s limbs
a foal’s,
a Christ’s,
long and scrawny
in the dim light.
A Pietà.
VII
Another poet came into being
when I saw the life of life,
the death of death:
the child I had birthed.
That was my beginning:
blood burning the groin,
the soul soaring, the baby wailing
in the arms of a nurse.
81
I think it will be winter when he comes.
From the unbearable whiteness of the road
a dot will emerge, so black that eyes will blur,
and it will be approaching for a long, long time,
making his absence commensurate with his coming,
and for a long, long time it will remain a dot.
A speck of dust? A burning in the eye? And snow,
there will be nothing else but snow,
and for a long, long while there will be nothing,
and he will pull away the snowy curtain,
he will acquire size and three dimensions,
he will keep coming closer, closer …
This is the limit, he cannot get closer. But he keeps approaching,
now too vast to measure …
82
He pissed on a firefly,
but the critter took wing
and alighted on my pants,
making me jump and scream,
afraid of catching fire.
No, no harm was done.
83
At the piano: my back to the world.
At the piano: behind a high wall.
At the piano: like going down into a mine,
or on a drinking binge, taking along no one.
84
Thought’s surface: word.
Word’s surface: gesture.
Gesture’s surface: skin.
Skin’s surface: shiver.
85
Against the current of blood
passion struggles to spawn;
against the current of speech
the word breaks the oar;
against the current of thought
the sails of dreams glide;
dog-paddling like a child, I swim
against the current of tears.
86
My craft is not stringing lyres
with sunbeams, nor weaving wreaths.
Patient cutting of facets
on tears unshed, that is my craft.
Not for the sake of a gleam in the eye,
but to leave a trace behind …
and truly royal will be the reward:
a chance to cry the heart out.
87
Cannot look at you when you eat.
Cannot look at you when you pray,
when you extricate your leg from your pants,
when you kiss and take me.
Cannot look at you when you sleep.
Cannot look at you when you are not here.
Cannot wait until you come home again
and after a prayer sit down to eat.
88
Wrinkles around the mouth
put it in parentheses.
Wrinkles in the corners of the eyes
put them in quotation marks.
Wrinkles across the forehead
crossed out the writing on it.
Wrinkles across the neck …
and the bridal veil of gray hair.
89
Who will winter my immortality
with me? Who will thaw with me?
Come what may, I shall never trade
the earthly love for the subterranean.
I still have time to turn
into flowers, clay, white-eyed memory …
But while we are mortal, my love, to you
nothing will be denied.
90
Eternalize me just a bit:
take some snow and sculpt me in it,
with your warm and bare palm
polish me until I shine …
91
dropped
and falling
from such
heights
for so
long
that
maybe
I will have
enough time
to learn
flying
92
He marked the page with a match
and fell asleep in mid-kiss,
while I, a queen bee
in a disturbed hive, stay up and buzz:
half a kingdom for a honey drop,
half a lifetime for a tender word!
His face, half-turned.
Half past midnight. Half past one.
93
Spinner, do not hesitate:
while the kiss is fresh,
snip the two threads
with one swift cut.
94
On the chin, on its edge,
under the chin many a kiss …
The golden boat trembles
on the surface of closed eyes.
Hair, rowlocks, clavicles,
fuzzy skin, lilies, reeds …
Every particle of me knows
what has happened, what is bound to be.
And I proffer my face, my shoulders
to the miracle as to the wind.
Come and row. A child again,
I will sleep curled up on the stern.
95
If only I could elope
to share with you the roof and the road!
But it is easier to bend the Milky Way,
to straighten out the rainbow,
to put an end to the Chechen war,
to feed starving kids on songs.
Should I stop loving you? Wish I could!
Easier to build a house on the waves.
96
I spin my destiny myself,
in this I need no help.
They confiscated at the airport
the scissors from the Parca.
A ripe tear rolled off,
the frail shoulders shook.
But the customs fellow did not speak
a word of ancient Greek.
97
We would hide behind the house
to play the maternity ward:
would walk around with bellies stuck out,
with a shard of glass would scratch
the bellies that were feeling a chill
to make a white and pink line;
would say: it is up to you,
if the mother lives,
the baby will die,
or the other way around,
in short, it’s either-or,
and no other way out.
But there is. I should have slapped
the silly midwife for her lies,
should have proudly stormed out
of that stupid maternity ward.
I would do so now. But at the time
I bathed in the bliss of shame,
shielded the belly with my hand:
let the baby live.
98
A poem is a voice-mail:
the poet has stepped out, most likely
will not be back. Please leave a message
after you hear a gunshot.
99
The voice. The handwriting. The gait.
Maybe the smell of my hair.
That’s all. Go ahead,
resurrect me.
100
Only she who has breast-fed
knows how beautiful the ear is.
Only they who have been breast-fed
know the beauty of the clavicle.
Only to humans the Creator
has given the earlobe.
The humans, through clavicles
slightly resembling birds,
entwined in caresses fly
at night to the place where,
rocking the cradle of cradles,
the babe is wailing,
where on a pillow of air
the stars nestle like toys.
And some of them speak.
Acknowledgments
The author and the translator are thankful to Deborah Garrison, Derek Walcott, Valentina Polukhina and Daniel Weissbort, Alice Quinn, Yelena Demikovsky and Brian Singh, Cecile Roulet and Michael Wyler, and Svetlana Buyanina for their assistance and support in preparing this book for publication.
“One Touch in Seven Octaves” was first published in Tin House. “We are rich, we have nothing to lose,” “If there is something to desire,” “I think it will be winter when he comes,” and “Let us touch each other” first appeared in The New Yorker. “Am I lovely? Of Course!” “Those who are asleep in the earth,” “To converse with the greats,” “I am in love, hence free to live,” “Multiplying in a column M by F,” “When the very last grief,” “He marked the page with a match,” and “Only she who has breast-fed” first appeared in Poetry. “Armpits smell of linden blossom” first appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation 20: Contemporary Russian Women Poets, edited by Daniel Weissbort, guest editor Valentina Polukhina (London: King’s College).
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vera Pavlova was born in Moscow and graduated from the Gnessin Academy of Music with a degree in history of music. She began writing poetry at the age of twenty, and is the author of seventeen collections of poetry and the librettos to five operas and four cantatas. Her poems have been translated into twenty-one languages. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Apollon Grigoriev Grand Prize (2001). One of the four poems by Pavlova featured in The New Yorker was selected by the Poetry in Motion program and was displayed in subway cars in New York City, as well as in buses in Los Angeles. She is currently one of the best-selling poets in Russia. If There Is Something to Desire is Pavlova’s first collection in English.
A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Steven Seymour is a professional interpreter and translator of Russian, Polish, and French. His Russian translations of W. H. Auden, Charles Simic, James Tate, and Billy Collins have appeared in leading Russian literary magazines, while his English translations of Vera Pavlova’s poems have appeared in Tin House and The New Yorker. He has also translated poems by Zbigniew Herbert, Adam Zagajewski, and Wislawa Szymborska from the Polish, as well as almost all of the French poems of Rainer Maria Rilke into English. He lives in New York City.
