The Voice Over

But no speaking of them.

—

^* Prince Guidon is a character in Alexander Pushkin’s Tale of Tsar Saltan (1831). As a baby, he was sealed in a barrel with his mother and thrown into the sea.

Then there are the mists of soup and toilet.

And headlines of today’s financial news,

First bell, a second-class train,

Inkblot and tear stain.)

I know (it would be better not to know)

That these universal birthing pains,

Rhythmic as a cannonade, are

The coming of a whole new strain.

That into sleepless bassinets

Yawn these gaping hatches.

That this demo-graphic tide

Boils and bubbles with every type.

Any old Martha from off the street

Boasts the same kinds of folds,

A map under every skirt—

A yielding, nebulous, smooth

Landscape, going under ice

For years and years to come.

Atop should lie like tracing paper

The periodic layers of events,

Of spectacles and blood-lettings;

A steamboat chugs across the heart

From nineteen thirty-nine.^*

While in the throat—a barricade in black-and-white.

—

^* An allusion to the popular song “Parokhod” (“The Steamboat”), which was written in 1939 and performed by Leonid Utyosov and his jazz orchestra; also a reference to Marina Tsvetaeva’s return to the USSR from France on a steamboat in 1939. About the latter, see Stepanova’s essay “The Maximum Cost of Living” in this volume.

On which great-grandma Sarah

—her eye, punched black last night,

is tied around like a pirate’s—

and Sanka and Sarah Sverdlova

are standing with the workers of the world.

2.

Of all those lying in the earth, foreheads tossed back,

Keeping my speech in mind through the pine coffin,

Poured like dry grain into a tin can,

Playing in the city park, I choose one:

In a white hat, with girlfriend and friend,

On an alpine path,

Where the century’s burning down like a wick,

Dwindling in the throng;

On a summer day in the Luxembourg Gardens,

Where Mary Stuart is,

Where I, too, in a hundred years, will stand

And there’s no covering your tracks;

On a winter night in Villefranche-sur-Mer

Watching the lights go.

In Petersburg in prison,

Here, look.

Sorting through the desk box

In the Moscow apartment.

On Pokrovsky Boulevard.

In the communal latrine.

In the hospital ward

In a white coat—

Receiving patients.

Now—only in my crowded skull.

With her daughter.

Her granddaughter.

Her great-granddaughter me.

This feminist firmament—its swallow, its stormcloud.

The Noah of a female ark.

And when she crowns that barricade,

I will not bare her arms-her breasts,

But neither will I cover her with a flag,

For there is no such flag.

And neither red, nor blue & white

Is any good for things like this.

Now, from on high the radio turns on

Liberty, barricade, democracy.

And for them, Sarah Ginzburg’s a demonstration

(Perhaps of the reasons for poetry?)

Though any old acacia growing wild’s

Both easier and better for things like this.

… but who can tell the difference anymore.

And if you put our Sarah in a vase

Or drape the barricade with acacia—

It’s the same number (of the estimated year)

We get when we go look up the solution.

Translated by Amelia Glaser and Ainsley Morse

The Desire to Be a Rib

1.

Me and myself, we’re uneasy, like a lady with her pitbull.

Here I, a many-headed storm, strike this little village.

Here I’m some saber-toothed dino at a peaceful feast.

Better grab me by the and shove me in this drawer:

Like into a chest of drawers—my chest

Between this rib and that one,

Beyond borders of skin, flesh, bone—

Into this inviolable lifetime home.

I relinquish my rights

To one sleeve and the other.

I relinquish my lefts

To doubt, opinion, rage.

I relinquish speech.

I sever myself from shoulders,

Face, coat and bra

For the sake of this vocation—the rib’s.

I want to lie here in your midst,

Like messy hens up in their nests,

Like flat herrings in their tins.

To hammer out your rib cages.

I want to take part in the work

Of leukocytes or electrons,

Shock-worker in the flesh works,

I’ll pack up all the sockets,

Account for the state of the tissue,

Like Tanya from the textile plant,

The whole of her dowry in two braids.

Dole out to you sateen and calico,

For covering over the empty, the

Endless hallways of our body.

Singing along with riddle-songs.

Popping open pores with flair,

Like that champagne bottle from before.

Like dark blood flowing toward the nape.

2.

…. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. .

…. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. …. .

Like back in wild childhood on not peeing yourself—

To concentrate on seeping, shade-like,

Under the skin layer, under the fatty membrane,

Under this nervy, living scrap,

Under that bushel, beyond the wet layers,

Into filaments stratified and hard

Boring through a passage like some tick.

And gently lying down, like something small.

Translated by Amelia Glaser and Ainsley Morse

Bus Stop: Israelitischer Friedhof

Along the bus route, to the right and all in front