The Voice Over

Hears the sounds of rain, barking, a ring and clink,

Sweetly squeezing her eyes shut (in vain: you can’t sleep

Through a visit by gold),

In the warm night, hear ye: suddenly and in the west

The gate hinges groan, snow blows into your mouth,

And weightily over the ice, as if on sand, villagers

Step with their wagons.

Silence? Silence. Nobody’s there, nobody.

The person-exemplar lies to sleep, as they lie,

Cumulonimbus migratory, feathery friable,

Banning evolution.

A female I-person would also sleep, but no.

There pining for us, who heal over in an hour

With grey hair, with scales, chicken feathers,

He is, and swallows tears.

Translated by Sibelan Forrester

It is certainly time to stop

The transversion of all these forms,

Fish turned fishwife, maiden turned maple,

Snow turned napkin, and all that jazz.

How to stop it? Well, for a start,

Set yourself the limit of self:

Squeeze the rhymes dry, cancel the metaphors,

Drop your lover, don’t sing in the bathroom.

Who is speaking to me in the night?

I am speaking, by daylight even.

Who is answering the question?

Answering; ask another!

Translated by Alexandra Berlina

Even bluer than the toilet tiles.

Even whiter than the sleeping sinks.

Longer still than toilet rolls, unwound.

Quieter than gently splashing water

Is my morning path toward the empty

Swimming pools, along the hotel’s quiet

Corridors, in clean and rapid lifts,

All around a sanitary strictness.

Does all this bring something else to mind?

What it brings is something else to mind!

All alone, as if in a balloon,

And—just half a meter off the ground.

Translated by Alexandra Berlina

(a birthday on the train)

So I rode, and it’s always amazing

That the curtain keeps holding on, like

A madwoman, a suicide, with a trembling hand,

But then, whoosh, flies into the window after all.

In my compartment, they won’t look me in the eye,

As if last night, someone made a thorough search,

Lights on, all belongings rummaged through.

Or maybe a little bird has told them something,

Explaining that what awakes from sleep

In a humbled strait sleeve of my self and mumbles hi

Isn’t me, but an old man, an experienced worker,

His suitcase clinking with empty space.

How did I meet-and-greet my birthday on the train?

Like a sentry who overslept and missed his minute of glory.

For all that, what a marvelous dream it was,

Which we will see again at the final trial.

Translated by Alexandra Berlina

(half an hour on foot)

Like when in a diving windshield glass

The very first of glaciers showed up,

All-the-bus, as if at the embrasures,

At the window, we breathe halfmouthed,

And they show us, show us,

To the right and to the left and again,

The tireless whiteness.

Felt ashamed, but tears spilled awake,

So on foot, catching my breath,

Straightening my spine in steps, rushing,

I open immemorial vent panes,

Sweep away the invisible dust.

You’ll get up in the dark, as if late in a country house,

Listen to the time, listen to your blood.

And a glimpse of a pro-i-e, that’s all there was,

A coloring book, so what.

A blue balloon spins-’n’-swirls in the sky,

Over my head spins-’n’-swirls in the sky,

It wants to fall down, spins-’n’-swirls in the sky,

Don’t fall silent, I don’t.

Translated by Irina Shevelenko

from Physiology and Private History

July 3rd, 2004

(on your birthday we visit a cemetery^*)

1.

I’ll now make a couple of

Glossy prints, tear open

A pack of Italic cigarettes,

Porno comics in cellophane,

The gentle sheath of the brain,

Under which there’s a smoky gray,

Breathing, like a spring,

A spring of this and that.

The cemetery floats in water,

A pie made of bricks.

Steamers, like water striders,

Scurry hither and thither.

The underage cypress has

A forced gloomy look,

Barely casting a shadow

On the neighborhood of shades.

While back there, in Russia, on Whit Monday

And on Soul Saturday, and thereabouts,

They’ve gathered together under the drizzle

By the friendly graves,

—

^* The San Michele Cemetery in Venice, where Joseph Brodsky is buried.

They light their candles, and crumble their bread,

And eggshells fall on the ground,

Which the deceased, as far as I recall,

Just couldn’t stand.

So then, the colored eggshells crumble

Off, mosaically.

The compulsory glass transparently filled,

Rainwater it’s not.

You can see those who stood there

Through those who stand there;

Little wings sewn to their feet,

And sometimes on their backs.

… And here, with the cooing of turtledoves

Behind the stone wall,

In a heavy beam of sunlight,

With an albatross meowing,

In the whole horizontal hall

From the Lutherans to the Greeks,

One is hard-pressed to find four

Living legs to walk,

And here, with nothing but dust and ivy

And the Pompeian blue,

A wreath of faience flowers is

Like a little rosy mouth,

A vial of vodka lies in shabby grass,

And a pile of copper coins

Is provided to promise someone

They’ll be back.