TO THE ASHES

We’re heading into the night. We’re shadows of ash
on transparent stallions.
The piebalds won’t budge.
They just wail and burn.

Whip the horses and see the scars,
scoop water from an empty pail.
Behind us, nothing but loss.
Sail off, but where to? – nothing around but soot.

Our dead are everywhere –
in the trees, blossoms and fetes.
That same ash in their mouths
won’t let them wake from death.

The light floods in, but wait: it’s hard
when night falls from your eyes.
When coals in place of hearts
die out and quickly turn to dust.



THE BERKUT OF MEZHIGORIE

Here I see
the wings of crucified birds:
a post to the right, a post to the left,
a cross in the center,
all as tall as trees.

How many ages have passed
since the time
a man's hand hammered nails
into enemies —
in reality always into your feet
no matter what form you’ve taken.

And the birds are dead flames,
bursting up, dying down,
seen from a distance
a signal of our insanity, a lighthouse to sailors,

but we don't see them,
and our ships are swept toward the cliffs.

 

LILIES

I didn’t notice how the day lilies wilted.
Their stems stick up — dried out stalks.

How the blue shutters faded,
and the furious birds banged into the glass.

What has happened to us all?

You’ll wake up early and call out my name,
but my name doesn’t talk,
it doesn’t bang against the rocks.

And I don’t understand silence, don’t drape my shoulders
in silence.



IF WE WERE GYPSIES

I’m only a sail,
the canvas is thin – it rips.
No one on the deck,
no one at the helm.

If we were gypsies,
with our whistles
and scarlet hems
we’d travel in a pack (can’t two make a pack?)

He’d sport a scar and pockmarks,
she’d be his wife.

But the gypsies went up in smoke,
not leaving us their blood.
Their knives were melted down.
Their hair scattered to the four winds.

I’m a Rom, just a sail –
no one on the deck
no one at the helm.

 

IN THE VOICE OF CALLAS

Cut off. Before the final chord.
We've parted. Separated like a ripe fruit:
flesh from stone.
Just a single shot. Suicidal.
Gunpowder plants burns, like a gardener roses.
Farewell for a long time.
We've fissioned into a million atoms.

Maria Callas:
“Ari, you'll hear my broken voice everywhere,
it will sound in your sleep, drive you crazy, force you to surrender,
because it can conquer any fortress.”

My voice somehow bothered you, didn't it?
Didn't you once say: “Poetry, my dear, is not enough.
I need a woman —
flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, just like me.”
End of the affair.

Maria Callas:
“You never believed that I could die of love.
Well you need to know — I did.
The world's gone deaf. My voice could not survive
the meanness of your slap.
But the Greek gods will avenge me.”

Maria, everything can be repeated. In a Paris apartment
or in the Russian provinces.
Mothers give up their children, to say nothing of lovers.
Why do they need originals, or goddesses
when they can make a copy from their ribs?