A she-wolf glares at the horse,
saliva leaves her maw like drool.
The poor horseman, lazybones,
rides in the troika like a lackey,
enters a dark palisade
clutching a bone in his fist.
He hands his whip to the co-ed,
he hands his cane to the old lady.
Greeting each hour with a toast,
he caresses the bold bone.
And the co-ed stands all dusty
like a carriage.
She does not move her visage
from the unknown portrait. She glints.
HE
I was examining my thoughts.
I saw they had other forms.
I was measuring my emotions.
I found their close borders.
I was testing my bodily movements.
I determined their simple significance.
I was losing my benevolence.
I have no more concentration.
Those who guess will guess.
I have nothing left to guess.
HE
I will speak now.
As he speaks, a small room appears. Everything is cut apart into pieces. Where are you our world. You do not exist. And we do not exist. Upon the plates sit Petr Ivanovich Ivanovich Ivanovich, the co-ed, Grudetsky the steward, Stepanov-Peskov and four hundred thirty-three Spaniards.
Enter Lisa or Margarita.
ONE or THE OTHER
What do I see.
What is this, an infernal conclave.
It smells of fire and brimstone here.
Your necks are as if it were gunpowdery,
ears arms legs noses
and eyes. You’re all so cataleptic.
For hours already it’s been winter,
has murder happened here by any chance.
GRUDETSKY THE STEWARD
Margarita or Lisa
would you like some tea or a clock.
SHE (ONE or THE OTHER)
You’re a brownnose, Grudetsky.
From the days of the tsar on
you’re Simon.
I ask you: has a murder taken place.
And after this music sounded for three hours.
Various waltzes and chorales.
In the meanwhile Kirillov managed to get married. But he still felt something was lacking.
STEPANOV-PESKOV
Murder. Don’t speak so much of murder.
We still have not understood murder.
We still have not understood this word.
We still have not understood this deed.
We still have not understood this knife.
KOSTOMAROV, HISTORIAN
Thirteen years.
Twelve years.
Fifteen years.
Sixteen years.
Everything around us is shrubbery.
GRIBOEDOV, WRITER
What’s there to talk about here,
he is a thief, that’s clear.
Steep magic visions
visit my soul.
They promise me
unspoken sickly pleasures.
My head is spinning and I feel
as if I were a hamster in a wheel.
O otherworldly creatures get you hence,
I’m off to Georgia today like everyone else.
Four hundred thirty-three SPANIARDS, pale upon a plate, cried out inimicably and unanimously:
Let the murther begin.
And there the darkness of darkness happened. And Grudetsky murdered Stepanov-Peskov. But what’s there to speak of, anyway.
They all ran into the civilian room and saw the following picture. Across the third table stood the following picture. Imagine a table and the following picture upon it.
Staring at the picture,
Grudetsky grasped
in his hand like a picture
the bloody cutlass.
Blood dripped in drops
and lay down on the earth,
the earth revolved
and the planets rotated.
Stepanov-Peskov
lay flat on the floor
resembling an eagle
without socks or boots.
He lay barefoot
like wild-rose confectionery.
This functionary
was stung by a bumblebee.
Thereupon LISA enters again and screams:
Aha, aha, didn’t I say there was going to be a murder.
They all cried hush at her and urged her to shut up.
Quiet, Lisa. Lisa, quiet, quiet, you’re one or the other.
Then HE again started to speak.
We saw the unfortunate body,
it lay without motion and force.
Life in it grew scanter and scanter
due to the wild blow of the cutlass.
Its eyes closed shut like nutshells.
What do we humans know of death.
We can be neither beasts nor mountains,
nor fish nor birds nor clouds.
Maybe the country or sofas,
maybe clocks and phenomena,
volcanoes, the deep of the sea
have some inkling of it.
Beetles and mournful birds
that spiral under the firmament
in their modest shirts,
for them death is a familiar event.
HE
What is the hour.
The hours run. They run.
HE
I noticed death.
I noticed time.
HE
They run. They run.
HE
Again the co-ed reappeared
like a noodle
and the student stooped over her
like a soul.
And the co-ed like a flower
achieved rest.
The swift troika sped away
to the east.
HE
What is the hour.
HE
The foliage stands in the forest like thunder.
HE
Now I will speak.
The tired candle now
is tired of burning like a shoulder.
And yet the co-ed still commanded,
O kiss me Stephan over and over,
why don’t you kiss my thighs,
why don’t you give my gut a kiss.
Stephan now felt bereft of force,
and terribly he clamored,
I cannot kiss you any longer,
I’m off to the university right now
to learn the discipline of science,
how to extract copper from metal,
how to fix electricity when it breaks,
how to spell bear,
and he declined then like a shoulder
without force upon the darling bed.
Then Kozlov came for his cure. He held loganberry in his hands and made faces. Future words rose before him which he pronounced meanwhile. But none of this was important. There was nothing important in any of this. What could have been important in this. Nothing.
Then Stepanov-Terskoy came. He was entirely feral. But he was not Stepanov-Peskov. Stepanov-Peskov got murdered. Let us not forget that. We must not forget that. Why should we forget that anyway.
A SCENE ON THE SIXTH FLOOR
FONTANOV
For five years we’ve been together,
you and I, you and I,
like a barn owl and an owl,
like the river and the shore,
like the valley like the mountain.
You are a co-ed as before,
your hair turns gray,
your female cheeks turn sallow,
in all this time you haven’t,
why should I lie, filled out.
Your scalp is showing through,
your sweetness is decrepit.
I used to think about the world,
about the glimmer of the spheres,
about waves and clouds
and now I’m old and
weak.
I now direct my thought
at radishes and pork,
was it a co-ed that I married
or an independent clothing designer.
MARGARITA or LISA, now become KATYA
How do I live? My soul flies off
from a cloddy mouth. Fontanov,
you’re pitiful and crude.
Your manly force, where is it?
I’ll stand beside the open window.
Look how the massive air undulates.
Look we can see the neighbors’ house.
Look, look, look, look all around us.
Look I clamber onto the windowsill,
like a branch I stand on the windowsill.
FONTANOV
Co-ed, wait for me.
SHE
Like a mug I stand on the windowsill.
FONTANOV
Co-ed, what’s with you.
SHE
Like a candle I stand on the windowsill.
FONTANOV
Co-ed, you’ve lost your mind.
SHE
I arrive.
It doesn’t say anywhere here that she jumped out of the window, but she jumped out of the window. She fell down on rocks. And she died. Oh, it’s so scary.
FONTANOV
I will not hesitate
but follow her,
smash all the plates,
rip up the calendar.
I’ll light lamps everywhere,
call for the steward
and take a portrait of Grudetsky
with me forever for the road.
Then music sounded for three hours.
HE
Margarita quick
open the door,
the door to poetry is open,
Margarita speak
of sounds.
We hear the sounds of objects,
we chew music like fat.
Margarita for the sake of science
we don’t believe that we’re asleep
we don’t believe that we breathe
we don’t believe that we write
we don’t believe that we hear
we don’t believe that we are silent.
HE
Night was rising in the sky.
The dull crescent like a soul
soared above the earth,
rustling in the thick reeds
fish ran up and down in the river
and the mournful lion roared.
Towns stood upright,
the beaver raced after prey.
HE
I was losing my benevolence.
HE
The inevitable years
came at us like herds.
Around us green shrubbery
undulated sleepily.
It was not much to look at.
HE
We have nothing more to think with.
His head falls off.
1931–1934
[E.O.]
An Invitation for Me to Think
Let us think on a clear day,
sitting down on stump and stone.
Us around the flowers grew,
the stars, the people, and their homes.
From the mountains tall and steep,
water fell at breakneck speed.
We were sitting at the moment,
we kept our eyes on them.
Us around the day shines bright,
underneath us stump and stone.
Us around the birds flutter
and blue maidens putter.
But where oh where us all around
is thunder’s newly absent sound.
The river’s part we contemplate
and against the stone we’ll state:
Night, where are you in your absence
at this hour, on this day?
Art, what is it that you feel or sense,
being there without us?
Government, where do you stay?
Foxes and bugs are in the woods,
concepts in the sky above—
come closer God and ask the fox:
So fox is it far from dawn to dusk?
Will the stream run a long distance
from the word understood to the word flower?
The fox will reply to God:
It’s all a disappearing road.
You or he or I, we’ve gone but a hair,
we hadn’t even time to see that minute,
and look God, fish and sky, that part has vanished
forever, it would seem, from our planet.
We said: Yes, it’s apparent,
we can’t see the hour ago.
We thought—we are
very lonely.
In a moment our
eye covers a little only.
And our hearing, down and out,
senses only one sound.
And our soul
knows but a sad snippet of science’s whole.
We said: Yes, it’s obvious,
it’s all very upsetting to us.
And that’s when we flew.
And I flew like a cuckoo
imagining my lightness.
A passerby thought: He’s coo-coo,
he’s made in a screech-owl’s likeness.
Passerby, forget your stupid gloom,
look, all around putter maidens blue,
like angels, dogs run smartly round,
why is it all boring and dark for you.
We’re tickled by what is unknown,
the inexplicable’s our friend,
we see the forest walking backward,
yesterday stands all around today.
The star changes in volume,
the world grows old, the moose grows old.
We once happened to be
in the saltwater body of the seas,
where the waves let out a squeak,
we monitored the proud fish:
the fish floated like oil
on the surface of the water,
we understood, life was burning out everywhere
from the fish to God and the star.
And the feeling of calm
caressed everybody with its arm.
But noticing music’s body
you burst not into tears.
The passerby addresses us:
Hasn’t grief taken hold of you completely?
Yes, music’s magic beacon
burned out, evoking pity.
The ruling night was just beginning,
we cried a century.
1931–1934
[M.Y.]
Rug Hydrangea
I regret that I’m not a beast
running along a blue path,
telling myself to believe
and my other self to wait a little,
I’ll go out with myself to the forest
to examine the insignificant leaves.
I regret that I’m not a star
running along the vault of the sky,
in search of the perfect nest
it finds itself and earth’s empty water,
no one has ever heard of a star giving out a squeak,
its purpose is to encourage the fish with its silence.
And then there’s this grudge that I bear,
that I’m not a rug, nor a hydrangea.
I regret I’m not a roof
falling apart little by little,
which the rain soaks and softens,
whose death is not sudden.
I don’t like the fact that I’m mortal,
I regret that I am not perfect.
Much much better, believe me,
is a particle of day a unit of night.
I regret that I’m not an eagle
flying over peak after peak,
to whom comes to mind
a man observing the acres.
I regret I am not an eagle
flying over lengthy peaks,
to whom comes to mind
a man ob
serving the acres.
You and I, wind, will sit down together
on this pebble of death.
It’s a pity I’m not a chalice,
I don’t like that I am not pity.
I regret not being a grove,
which arms itself with leaves.
I find it hard to be with minutes,
they have completely confused me.
It really upsets me terribly
that I can be seen in reality.
And then there’s this grudge that I bear,
that I’m not a rug, nor a hydrangea.
What scares me is that I move
not the way that do bugs that are beetles,
or butterflies and baby strollers
and not the way that do bugs that are spiders.
What scares me is that I move
very unlike a worm,
a worm burrows holes in the earth
making small talk with her.
Earth, where are things with you,
says the cold worm to the earth,
and the earth, governing those that have passed,
perhaps keeps silent in reply,
it knows that it’s all wrong.
I find it hard to be with minutes,
they have completely confused me.
I’m frightened that I’m not the grass that is grass,
I’m frightened that I’m not a candle.
I’m frightened that I’m not the candle that is grass,
to this I have answered,
and the trees sway back and forth in an instant.
I’m frightened by the fact that when my glance
falls upon two of the same thing
I don’t notice that they are different,
that each lives only once.
I’m frightened by the fact that when my glance
falls upon two of the same thing
I don’t see how hard they are trying
to resemble each another.
I see the world askew
and hear the whispers of muffled lyres,
and having by their tips the letters grasped
I lift up the word wardrobe,
and now I put it in its place,
it is the thick dough of substance.
I don’t like the fact that I’m mortal,
I regret that I am not perfect,
much much better, believe me,
is a particle of day a unit of night.
And then there’s this grudge that I bear
that I’m not a rug, nor a hydrangea.
I’ll go out with myself to the woods
for the examination of insignificant leaves,
I regret that upon these leaves
I will not see the imperceptible words,
which are called accident, which are called immortality, which are called a kind of roots.
I regret that I’m not an eagle
flying over peak after peak,
Alexander Vvedensky Page 9
