The Voice Over

My soul, unmarred, unmarried,

You are all mist and dew,

Homely and unhurried,

Beautiless and subdued—

Where the azure used to sparkle in

Vermillionish banks,

There muscular and masculine

Clouds close their solid ranks.

Translated by Dmitry Manin

There he lies in his new bed, a band of paper round his head,^*

Such a mustachioed gentilhomme, now in the coffin all alone,

So here he lies, all numb and quiet, and the collar of his face

Is growing yellow from inside, but you would best avert your gaze,

For deep within, just like a clock that’s scratching its tick-tock-tick-tock,

He still produces, dull and low, his never-ceased Iloveyouso,

But all the people at his side, they wouldn’t hear him if they tried,

Just us, we look from the plafond, invisible, but not for long,

Each one of us, so well we know:

I too had squadrons to command,

Wore in my mouth Iloveyouso,

Wore round my head a paper band.

Translated by Alexandra Berlina

—

^* In Russian Orthodox funeral rites, paper or cloth bands inscribed with a prayer and sacred images are placed on the forehead of the deceased.

Don’t wait for us, my darling

Me and my friend been took.

Reporting back from the front, sir:

There’s war wherever you look.

We’re based down in a basement

In the deepest depths of the clay

They’re throwing flames above us

But we’ve gone away

Some arrived only lately

Some at the beginning of time

All of them flat as playing cards

Fallen in the grime.

And the earth that flows between us

Is thick as wine.

We were men but now

We’re amino acids in soup

The smell of tears and sperm

And bonemeal and gloop

And me I’m singed at the edges

A piece of felted wool

The one who stood at the window with you

Is made of deep hole.

When they lay that table

With plates on damask cloth

When they light the Christmas tree

And sing Ave to the host

When a camel hoof

Breaks the icy crust—

A king’s ransom: gold

Frankincense and myrrh

Won’t light us through the cold

Won’t ward off the hunger

So it was all a lie, my girl.

No need to caress the brambles

Or finger through the copse

I’m the empty corner of old cloth

The earth has lain on top.

Translated by Sasha Dugdale

Don’t strain your sight,

What’s mortal is not inside.

However you knock,

They won’t come to unlock.

However I love

The depth of your tender gaze,

Still sparrows will arrive,

And peck at our remains.

I am earth, march-’n’-marsh, muck-’n’-mold,

Collarbone, flowers in season.

Naught will happen to me, I know,

For a whole ’nother reason.

Translated by Irina Shevelenko

FOUR OPERAS

TRANSLATED BY SIBELAN FORRESTER

1. Carmen

They still allow us to smoke in the office,

They get it: this kind of work, you have to smoke,

They run after one as he’s walking: hey, commander,

The second from the table raises his eyes to the door,

The second one from the trial raises his eyes to a hook,

There the lamp’s swaying back and forth, Svetlana, what’ll I say

When the earth quakes, and the ground opens its mouth,

And the arrested earn their execution?

The third one stands up, decorated, and he has everything,

But they’ve called him, and he goes.

“Look for me at dawn,” he said to his comrades,

As if he and they are he and someone else

Who’s alone, like Job, and waits for him like for a storm.

What’s that blue sign on his arm, sister?

That’s a powerful sign on his arm, girlfriend.

There it sort of says: beloved,

My darling, take care of yourself, don’t be on the take in front of everyone,

Give your parents a call, take time off on Wednesday,

If you don’t take it—try to behave yourself,

And if there’s anything call, if there’s anything call for me.

2. Aida

Beautiful, quiet, or rather: she hardly knows Russian,

I like her surroundings, the gingerbread, sugar and all the halvah,

All and all manner of halvah that’s exuding praise,

When she’s in the corner and weighing out the goods.

Her fingers take tangerines by the sides, the freight

Of greenish, stepped-on, sweetly moaning pears—by the neck,

She loads the dark flesh of eggplant into the white

Flesh of rustling plastic; and the price list is born.

While the persimmon is like a mother to her, and she doesn’t look at it

And feels shame for her public profession.

I ask her a question, and she doesn’t give an answer.

I drop by like a thief, and she won’t restrain the thief.

Her weak, her cheap labor force

Is all gathered in her arms and won’t tolerate conversation.

Her father and everyone’s will descend upon us like an avalanche,

The moment she doesn’t turn out to be a virgin.

Her father and everyone’s, the elder guide,

Head doctor of an empty mountain hospital,

Where someone’s ribs, like the mother’s womb, are stretched

And fear pulls apart eyelashes that were squeezed flat.

Her father and everyone’s, he’s coming after his dotter,

Along the dark route he stretches by day and by night,

Like a stripe of fug on a train car’s walls.

When his armies make their way into the city,

And stick like a bone in the throat by Red Square,

And go along ambulance roads, easing their hunger,

Taking the fox-fur coats off the homespun poor,