you stand upon the stone of song
and in impatience even air
transforms into a small fish.
Here you stand marvelously playing
and momentarily the table moves away,
also the chair canters or rather limps
and then geography appears.
I to the strumming of long strings
would like to meditate am I
a flash of lightning or geography.
FOMINE, frightened:
But I didn’t think anyone was playing. Where were you?
NOSOFF
What of it if you thought no one was playing.
WOMAN
You two for over two hours have been here
loitering, trembling, sandy and frantic.
Your oily bones and voices will cohere,
you’re the riders of science in the dark.
When I lie down to represent Valday,
that magical not very tall mountain range,
Fomine, you ride ahead. Hussaroff, hold your tongue.
Look, the things you two say litter the sides of the road.
FOMINE
What do you mean by “you two.” I don’t get your questions.
What makes you think Nosoff is here.
There was only Fomine here all this time,
and that’s me.
NOSOFF, angry:
You? You farm animal!
FOMINE
Who, me? Me? (Calmer.) Whatever. (He leaves.)
NOSOFF
Fomine needs to have his head examined. He’s crazy, what do you think?
WOMAN
Woman asleep.
Air aloft.
Night transforms into a vase.
The living world enters
another otherworldly phase.
Dormir, Nosoff, dormir.
Beetles creep out of their cages,
the deer stand dead-like.
Trees with the eyes of saints
rock, forgotten by God.
This world is all caved in.
Dormir, Nosoff, dormir.
The sun shines in the dark of the forest.
A flea sits on the neck of a demon.
Hairy birds sparkle,
habits promenade in the garden.
The world is all crumbled apart.
Dormir, Nosoff, dormir.
FOMINE, returning:
I said it right away: the earth is of low value.
NOSOFF
You’re off your rocker, poor fellow.
They quietly and fluidly exit.
It was then the proud nations
mounted the throne of nature,
contemplating sea and heath,
twinkling, measuring the earth.
So they sit and so they twinkle,
so they cry out in a whisper,
crash on, waves, and thunder roll,
time forever onwards flow.
Objects stand off to the side
and, indifferent, keep silence.
Sluggish comets in the skies
lead the meager life of dreams.
Some animals party
under the nonverbal moon,
their souls gloomily move,
saliva stains their mouths.
The lord clerk comes,
locks the beasts in a box of horror,
drives them to the house of madness
where they die with difficulty.
Beware of rabid dogs.
Nations as if deep in sleep
stare at their garden plots.
There’s a watchman that sniffs snuff.
Into the fireplace blazing asunder
suddenly enters Fomine bearing a number.
FOMINE
People take heart as they dream,
the fish lord it all around,
only you O sister moon
only you can’t sleep my friend.
Hello nations,
Peters, Ivans, Marias, Nicholases, Silentiuses,
you that pull mantles
over the tail of nature,
what are you staring at.
NATIONS
We poor fellow, poor pauper,
stare in the mirror
where the earth lies reflected
like a serpentine snake.
We shall study the earth.
Due to study of the earth
some got taken to a hospital,
a mental hospital.
FOMINE
What did you study, nitwits?
NATIONS
We know that rocks are skinflints,
we know the earth is round,
we know it has three corners,
forests, rains, a road,
that man is the master of God.
We know that stars above the earth
twinkle with chemical composition,
they obey our regulations
and find it an honor and a privilege to engage in heavenly circumambulation.
We know everything we understand everything.
PLUGSKY
Timid, you look on,
a dead ringer for death.
You whirl before us
an empty crate.
Can this of evils be the crate.
I greet the coming of the goat.
FOMINE
Progenitors I came to you,
I am determined to speak with you,
you can see for yourselves
that I’m no billygoat, no devil and no gelding,
much less anyone else.
So Fomine spoke, then waved his hand
in exasperation,
burst into embarrassed tears
and started his transformation.
FOMINE’S ADDRESS
Gentlemen, gentlemen,
all objects, each stone,
fish, birds, chair, flame,
mountains, apples, water,
brother, wife, father, lion,
hands, thousands, faces,
war, hut, wrath, breath
of horizontal rivers,
all of them nearsighted man
set down in his tables.
If a chair was created then what’s its function?
It’s so I have somewhere to sit while I practice meat mastication.
If a river sprang into being with a wave of the hand,
we suppose that filling our bladders must have been the intended end.
If the heavens were designed,
then they should demonstrate miracles of science.
Also created were male mountains,
purposes, fog, mother, and seldom.
If we start up conversations,
you dummies have to understand them.
Gentlemen, gentlemen,
here water flows right before you,
it creates patterns all by itself.
Under that bush the years lie
speaking about their fate.
There, a chair transforms into victory,
science makes itself out to be Wednesday,
as animals, ranks, and illnesses
float linearly in the abyss.
The king of the world Christ Jesus
never played cards, never hit children,
he never went to bars,
he never smoked cigars.
The king of the world transformed the world.
He was a celestial brigadier
unlike us sinners.
Yes we are boring and absurd.
In our posthumous rotation
the one salvation is transformation.
Gentlemen, gentlemen,
look the whole earth is water.
Look the whole water is day and night.
The flying priest exits his booth
and glares in horror at the changes,
at death depicting froth.
Progenitors are you content?
NATIONS
We can’t abide the transformation.
Afterwards Fomine went into a dark r
oom, where a road ran in the middle.
FOMINE
Sharpnosoff, you here?
SHARPNOSOFF
Entire.
FOMINE
What are you thinking about?
SHARPNOSOFF
I’m standing just like myself,
my shoulder propped against the wall.
Something is supposed to happen here.
Let’s say we’re both locked up.
Neither knows or understands anything.
We sit and wait.
FOMINE
War passes under
the rain, clanging
armor. It’s full of
pleasure.
SHARPNOSOFF
Listen. The reverse of the mirror
thunders. The haughty chair
takes a walk. I see it synchronously
fly in this turning.
FOMINE
Touch this rich table.
I feel the presence of a corner.
SHARPNOSOFF
Ouch it’s burning.
FOMINE
What’s burning.
SHARPNOSOFF
The couch is burning. It’s hot.
FOMINE
My God. The rug is on fire.
Where do we hide.
SHARPNOSOFF
Ouch it’s hot,
the armchair is boiling right under me.
FOMINE
Run away run away,
the inkwell started singing.
Lord help us
in this burning.
SHARPNOSOFF
Everything’s coming to a halt.
Everything is in flames.
FOMINE
The world grows incandescent with God.
What are we to do.
SHARPNOSOFF
I never drank wine in my life,
not even a splash.
Farewell. I am transformed into ash.
FOMINE
If you objects are gods,
where’s objects your speech.
I’m afraid I can never
get across such a road.
OBJECTS, murmuring:
Yes, that’s a special rubicon. A particular rubicon.
FOMINE
Here stand the scorching tables
similar to eternal cauldrons,
as chairs like patients with high fever
blacken in a living clump a bit farther.
I must say this is even worse than death,
other things are just toys in comparison.
Day by day it gets worse and worse.
BURNOFF
Brighten up, sit.
Feel the last heat.
The theme of this event
is God visiting objects.
FOMINE
I understand.
BURNOFF
There can be no other theme
than death’s eternal system.
Catastrophes, diseases, executions
are just her fun celebrations.
FOMINE
There’s a contradiction in that.
I’m leaving.
The dining table lets survey
the world cadaver’s crème brûlée.
It stinks of rot around.
Some dummies practice
multiplication,
others drink poison.
The dry sun, light, and comets
silently sat down on objects.
Oaks lowered their crowns.
The air smelled abject.
Motion, heat, and density
have lost their intensity.
Hope flaps its shivering wing
alone above the human world.
A sparrow by a pistol hurled
barely holds the tips of ideas in its beak.
Everybody’s gone insane.
The world went out like a candle,
the world went out like a rooster.
However, much benefit ensued.
Of course the world still hasn’t come to an end,
its crown not bare yet,
but it really has lost a lot of its luster.
Fomine lay prone and turning blue.
He raised his double-windowed arm
and started praying. Only God may be.
Space lay down far away.
The flight of an eagle flowed above a river.
The eagle held an icon in its fist,
there was God on it.
It may be that sleep made earth
deserted, poor, thin.
It may be we’re culprits. We are afraid.
And you airplane eagle may
flash like an arrow into the ocean
or like a sooty candle
collapse into the river.
The star of meaninglessness shines,
it alone is fathomless.
A dead gentleman runs in
and silently removes time.
1931
[E.O.]
The Gray Notebook
Above the dark good sea
the boundless air rushed here and there,
it flew like a blue falcon,
silently swallowing the night’s poison.
And the air thought: everything passes,
rotted fruit hangs by a string.
Like a dream, the star arises,
the bee immortal sings.
Why shouldn’t man, like death or stone,
watch the sand without a word.
The flower longs with its petals
and thought descends upon the flower.
(And the air swept the sea
as if the sea of metal be.)
This hour the flower understands
the forest, sky, and diamond.
The flower is a jerk, a leafy grove,
we watch it on our right,
as long as we are still alive
we’ll snip it with a knife.
(And the air swept the sea
as if the sea of metal be.)
The flower’s wiser than the man,
it asks to be given a name.
We named the flower andrey,
he is our peer in matters of the mind.
Bugs and birds around the flower
moaned aloud like forest cups,
a river ran around it
sticking out its stinger,
and the ants and the butterflies
ring like bells above the flower,
the nightingales cry pleasantly,
tenderly flying over the fields.
And the air swept the sea
as if the sea of metal be.
◆◆◆
KOLOKOLOV
I’d gladly drink another shot of that water
to the health of this airy bird,
who flies like a fanatic,
circling over bushes of excitement like a lunatic,
her eyes’ magnetic shine
take in rays of the highest caliber.
She hovers, this candle-bird,
above the drop of vodka, over mountain, over river,
often adopting the look of a psalm,
possessing the image of a hollow thing,
she does not snag the hill’s wing,
an earthly man pines for her.
She is a goddess divine.
She is God’s paper, sweet and kind,
she does not find pleasant
life’s crowded desert.
You, little bird, are suicide,
or you are renunciation.
KUKHARSKY
I would like to touch this heavenly body
that has perspired overnight like a maiden,
and this inexplicable figure of the night
I’d very much like to encompass with sight
this night near death,
this daughter breathing her last breath,
material as the heavenly sand,
now wilting into Tuesday,
I’d lift a particle of this night like a petal in my hand,
but I feel just the same.
SVIDERSKY
Kukharsky, have you been sniffing ether?
KUKHARSKY
I touch a stone. But the hardness of the stone
does not convince me anymore of anything.
Let the sun shine like a palm tree in the sky
but its light doesn’t do anything for me.
Everything everything has color,
everything everything has length,
everything everything has length,
has width, and comets’ depth,
everything everything now fades
and everything remains the same.
KOLOKOLOV
Why are we sitting here like little children,
wouldn’t it be better to sit down and sing something,
a song, for instance.
KUKHARSKY
Let’s sing the surface of a song.
THE SONG OF THE NOTEBOOK
Sea, O sea, you’re the homeland of waves,
the waves are sea-children.
The sea is their mother
and their sister’s the notebook,
it’s been that way now for many a century.
And they lived very well.
And they prayed often.
The sea to God
and the children to God.
And later they resettled in the sky
from where they sprayed rain,
and on that rainy spot a house grew.
The house lived well.
It taught the doors and windows to play
shore, immortality, dream, and notebook.
Once upon a time.
SVIDERSKY
Once upon a time I walked poisoned down a road,
and time walked in step by my side.
Baby birds sang variously in the bushes,
and the grass lay low in many places.
Like a battlefield in the distance rose the mighty sea.
It goes without saying that it was hard to breathe.
I thought about why only verbs are
subject to the hour, minute, and year,
while house, forest, and sky, like some Mongol tribe,
have suddenly been released from time.
I thought about it and I understood. We all know it,
that action became an insomniac China,
that actions are dead, they stretch out like corpses,
and now we decorate them with garlands.
Their mobility is a lie, their density a swindle,
and a dead fog devours them.
Objects are like children that sleep in their cradles.
Like stars that move in the sky just a little.
Like drowsy flowers that soundlessly grow.
Objects are like music, they stand in place.
I stopped. Here I thought,
my mind could not grasp the onslaught of new tribulations.
Alexander Vvedensky Page 6
