Inviting her home- that was a mistake.
Of course he made an effort:
prepared some lamb (a Turkish recipe),
bought a bottle of Barolo (light hints of rose and tar).
But straight away she noted:
the cracked window in the library,
the rip in the paper lampshade,
and worst of all the boiler,
which moaned as if it had a ruptured lung.
‘This is the interior of his soul’ she thought.
‘Well, maybe not the interior, maybe the landscape’.
She found ‘landscape’ a better, more lyrical term,
and having hit upon it
she grew softer, warmed a little.
Yesterday evening,
as I kissed my infant grandchildren,
I realized that tiny French and Italians
grow used to the smell of wine
while still in their cribs,
inhaling the breath of their fathers and grandfathers.
So they don’t start with the first, supervised gulp in childhood,
but with a breath.
Quick. Turn and dive into the Italian deli.
Leave the secret agents lost in the English fog.
And when you come out again,
with a bottle of Chianti,
they’re already powerless to stop you.
STRATEGY
The attack should lead along several fronts. Target the following zones:
liver,
kidneys,
heart.
If the liver doesn’t succumb,
if the kidneys don’t fail,
then there’s always the heart.
But keep the liver in constant shock and awe:
dowse it with white,
then red.
Use beer on the kidneys.
Spirits on the heart.
Attack with everything at the same time.
Something will give in.
Just don’t lose faith.
If my son wrote poetry…..
Father would leave these lovely little circles behind him
(on sheets of paper, on tablecloths, newspapers),
imprints from glasses of Moldovan, sometimes Georgian.
Circles on the pine kitchen table,
on the oak desk with the typewriter.
Traces of my father,
of his rounded, wine-like soul:
more recognizable than a signature or a shoe.
Translated by Peter Pomeranzev
I want to speak about a dead friend, about the frame of
his spectacles
which feel cold without his ears, without the bridge of his
nose. But I can't.
It's phoney, because he, I, and the one reading this
are all in the same context, that of death.
To lament somebody is phoney, egotistical.
Just try telling me I'm wrong.
Translated by Daniel Weissbort
PRAGUE 1989
It was a big success.
Why?
Because it was a beer revolution.
Yes.
There is that kind –
velvet beer.
Tasting of malt, hops,
a touch bitter, a hint of lime honey,
almond…
Velvet would’ve worn,
gone into holes, rotted through,
but the smell of beer…
It lives!
It tingles in the nose!
Every day
the revolution gushes out of barrels,
taps, bottles! Translated by Frank Williams
Verses from a Taverna in Uranopol
No.
To sit on a verandah with a view
of ultramarine
drink brandy made from local vineyard pulp
breathe in
the smell of roasting calf – infection –
and write of all this too?
Olives?
Okay.
But from a London shop
Italian, Turkish, Cypriot, whatever
but London anyway, a shop of broken English
where even Russians are compatriots
and the shopkeeper, asking
'How's life?'
can guess the answer.
If I'm asked, what's the story about: it's
about how the story climbs,
how it clambers up ridges, mountains:
in Chapter one, through beechwoods
then higher, in Chapter two
through spruce and silver fir
and – out of breath by now –
still higher, to Chapter three
where broadleaf and conifer mix:
to juniper, wind-thrown pine
and thickets of grey dwarf willow
till at the very top –
the epilogue now –
patches of moss and lichen on the summit –
our tale stops short: face to face
with Gorynych, the Russian dragon –
'Ugh, stench of your Russian bones!'
Translated by Sally Laird
Warmth, first
even ardour:
the very same books on the shelves
same view from the window
same failings
(leaving one's wife to
pick up the telephone)
and the wives themselves
commutable
parts of the equation –
and even the girls on the horizon
are from the same countries.
And then comes fear:
we're identical.
Then warmth again,
even ardour.
Between Larissa and Katerini
one feels ashamed
to cover the mouth
with palm
recalling the city of yawns
the pub on Shirland Road, where
you toss between
ales: dark ale, light ale, dark.
Wherever you look:
men in white
are rolling black balls
across a green lawn.
Order. Logic. Mystery.
Runs. Throws. Gestures.
Some secret alliance. A plot.
Must be a hospital garden.
What kind of hospital?
Ah, come on, what kind...
Translated by Sally Laird
Hide behind a fir tree
stubbly cheek to bark
out of pounce
as the devil's scuttles past
But no! The gluey resin's
stuck my finger past...
Scrunch goes the knife
and the deed is done.
But who'll wed me now
with my ring-finger gone?
Grieve not
fair youth
we'll find you a bride:
teeth on the stove and
titties on the hook
snot across the hedgerow
and a muscly rump
a comely cunt
a comely, soapy cunt.
Translated by Sally Laird
Maybe this
what people mean
when they talk of maturity
being like autumn:
when the windows within you
turn brittle
and the wind starts to whistle
from somewhere inside you
and people can see right through you, but you
feel uneasy
even in the mirror
catching yourself
and from deep in your throat, a dog
strains at the leash
what else could they mean but this?
I'll hide her safe
in the vineyard
later forget
where it was I left her
but come grape-treading time
I'll go back and grope
among the vineleaves, burst
upon a breast.
One wall: a common seascape
the other: a pack of 'Ararat' –
cigarette vignette –
together: the Peloponnese.
And him in the middle. Sitting.
Listening to the match he taped
last week on
Radio Moscow.
Several time rewinding
back to 'Go-o-oal!'
Look at his face:
he's happy.
The tale he tells:
'I helped myself morally.'
Schizophrenia migrantium?
Translated by Sally Laird
With suntanned girls it's simpler
to reach an understanding
why should they want more sunning?
And simpler to part:
once the tan wears off
they themselves, ashamed
slip off.
Is it I who refuse to be an Aegean poet?
To answer to 'Konstantinos' or 'Odysseus'?
With fig-sticky fingers to smear
a sun-tan on passing Inges?
But who'll keep company with next-door Linda?
Dragging her father home
(why ever did he leave Belfast?)
With the air
that even ultramarine turns grey
with the cobwebs you whisk from your face as if
coming down from the attic
or leaving the lumber room?
With the pub where men from the council flats
Speak a language you'll never master?
Talking of the pub
I noticed a gentleman there the other day
Holding a page of type-script.
'Verse?' I asked him.
'Yes. A list of clients,' he replied.
Translated by Sally Laird
Strips of light
in a room.
Daytime.
July.
Kiev.
The lightest strip
breathes alongside
on the divan.
On a map for fingers
Kiev
is somewhere near Alexandria.
Translated by Frank Williams
A small landscape in October,
a shabby one,
worn out,
with a whiff of a stinky
cigarette,
with a wink,
with a wife
beautiful only on November 7th
and New Year,
with a sort of
pathetic
"cheerio!"
Her flat body,
laid on the divan,
is indistinguishable
from a Persian carpet.
Slightly tickling kisses
melt soundlessly.
To the arabesques of her caresses
there is no end.
Sperm, too,
is absorbed without trace
into her fibre.
Their prison term
is so long,
that you begin
to forget them,
and when someone
finally
turns up out of the zone,
you experience a feeling of horror,
but soon,
after hearing on the radio
that he's been arrested again,
you feel easy
and rejoice.
In the street,
buying wine,
we light-heartedly swapped
phobias:
mine
of streetwalkers,
his
of homosexuals.
Reaching home,
a little of our light-heartedness
went with every gulp.
A cloud of fear
hovered in the room.
We left each other
hastily somehow,
never again
to meet
alone.
Translated by Frank Williams
This is what Flaubert said
about his novel
Madame Bovary:
What can I say about this book?
Above all I wanted to convey
that specific yellowish coloration
of alleyways
where melancholy sometimes makes
its nest.
Never once embraced you
on our own.
There's always been
a third party,
and in the intertwining
of our bodies
I mistake their hand
for mine or yours
and kiss it.
Monday morning,
by prior arrangement,
he phones
the School of Oriental Studies
and explains at length
her situation,
a refugee, studies incomplete,
sorts it all out, fixes it up,
and all this time
imagines himself
naked, astride
her, half-turned
and pouring wine –
either for himself
or for her.
Translated by Frank Williams
In the storeroom of the corner shop
next to our house
it is cold and airless.
The woman behind the counter who resembles
a bag of sugar
is dragging something bulky.
Vitaly Andreyevich looks
at the window, closed
and painted over with broad brush strokes.
I stand with my back to the door
at the wash basin
and wash off my face.
My wife comes running in.
Through the noise of water
I hear her voice in agitation:
"Vitaly Andreyevich,
isn't there enough room in your KGB office?
Must you have a talk with him
here?"
These switches and rustles
of his poems,
conspiratorial shadows
of lovers,
coffee grounds of night,
a damp dryness,
soured rags,
suffusions of wine.
An enveloping
woman's name – Alexandria.
Translated by Frank Williams
Goodbye Linda
Linda's family's moved on.
They used to live opposite.
My wife
not wanting
to witness the Irish nightmare of their life
gave Linda's mother curtains.
Linda's father
used to walk a tightrope down the street
with whisky in his pocket
and a ginger quiff –
a Beatnik
from a Soviet cartoon.
Linda was twelve then
trailed round after her sister
the prostitute.
I'd glance anxiously
at my son. How much
did he understand?
I felt a bit afraid.
But now Linda's family's moved on
I can't say I'm glad. Translated by Sally Laird
The school
is having a disco
And my son's grown up at last.
We went to the corner barber's
-Sutherland Avenue and Harrow Road –
and had the Italian
cut his hair a la Elvis.
Outside
He burst into tears.
Blurted out in clumsy Russian
- I wa-a-a-nta stay a
k-i-i-i-id.
I understood then
the sixties fad
for cute little forelocks, fringes
- done not to copy the West
but out of terror.
Don't shout at me, Sir,
I am only a kid,
Sir, please don't
Please don't arrest me, Sir. Translated by Sally Laird
Remembering father
In the old days, fathers
used to look like grandfathers.
Nowadays they look rather more
like elder brothers.
Which is why children, nowadays
so often call dads by name
instead of 'dad'.
Ethnically, all those
papa-grandpapas
were Jews
whereas the modern-day Dad-brother's
American.
This observation would remain
somewhat abstract if it weren't for
a raucous cry
'Igor! C'm'ere!'
That's the whole point.
Power. Forfeited.
Maybe they haven't taken it
but we've certainly
gone and lost it.
Translated by Sally Laird
I showed my wife
A new poem. It went
'A woman I hardly knew
Seduced me and left me
With a bloody knee.
How the hell did it get like that?
Grazed on the carpet?
Well, but I couldn't exactly
Take her off to the bedroom!'
My wife said 'What if my parents...?'
My wife was appalled.
Why did you go away?
Why did mama
take you?
Just to annoy me?
Just so she could
love you all by herself?
But I found the gum you
stuck under the table. Pig.
I've been chewing it
ever since. Thank you.
Don't you worry
he says
down the foreign telephone
Just get a paper napkin from the kitchen
roll up your sleeve
and give a firm swipe
to the aquarium wall
the fish are used to it.
Why does it always begin with
'Don't you worry'?
What's he so worried about?
When he left on holiday, I asked
Who are you most scared of, kids or grownups?
Kids, he said, of course.
I watched
How at dusk
They hid in the cellar
A box of apples
A box of grapes
A sack of potatoes
The greengrocer and the greengroceress
In the hills of Verona.
Translated by Sally Laird
You know
what interests me
is the texture of love,
the fragility of this texture.
There are those labels on clothes:
'handwash only'
or
'iron at no more than 40 degrees'.
Yes, iron by hand,
avoid overheating, and especially
never bring to the boil etc.
It's true
I'm not interested in you,
although you do excite me.
But the texture, the texture.
Translated by Daniel Weissbort
Curvature of Shoulder
Against the background of a smoky female shoulder
is the dark smaller one of the bottle,
or the other way round:
depending on whether one is sitting or lying down.
Now I know what maturity means: I invite
the loveliest girlfriends to share a bottle, but my object is
the little shoulder
of the bottle, while the smoky female one is just a bit of
fluff, decoration, so to speak.
How can they stand it?
This is lousy behaviour, an old man's vice:
to hug a cool bottle,
while gazing at a girlfriend seated a little way off.
Translated by Daniel Weissbort
In England there is no consolation for death.
O, fortunate Russians!
How their frantic efforts cheer one:
flying back and forth to some other city after Hungarian
medication,
phoning New York and securing an invitation for a dying man,
rousing all the Christians of Europe.
Now you're the hero,
and what's more, a tragic one.
But in England
there is no consolation for death.
Translated by Daniel Weissbort
Sometimes, all the same, one wants
to write poetry in English.
I know, when this "sometimes" is.
It's when one has committed some tactless
or shameful act.
One may begin with "Actually"
and then continue in English,
soi-disant humorously, narrating
how, for instance, in London, I was once introduced to a
female from Thailand,
and she held out her hand and, fool that I was,
I shook it vigorously, but her fingers
were beset with rings, veritable hoops,
and I squeezed so hard that in Thailander's face
there was an expression of pain,
and her eyes filled with tears.
Actually...
Translated by Daniel Weissbort
Here's something:
it was May,
after many entreaties and requests,
I was at last permitted to go out
lightly clothed.
But in this country
the months stick together,
like ravioli.
You've just got to live and die
in a mac.
Translated by Daniel Weissbort
I kissed her, well, approximately five and a half times.
And each time she squinted and turned into
a bird: as if to say, it wasn't me any longer, I'd nothing
to do with it...
Since then, my usual answer to the question "Have you ever
kissed a bird?"
is in the affirmative.
Translated by Daniel Weissbort
It was a joke: just fancy now, said I
A stage with strippers. Circle, pit and stalls,
The whole place crammed with menfolk. There I sit
Back row in comfort. Next to the projector,
A chewed-about and fairly scratchy print,
Perhaps Christian-Jacques, perhaps De Sica,
I kiss, caress. Could I really bear
To love elsewhere?
A band. Ice-cream on sale. A mountain of a man
Now opens up one of those special boxes:
From inside –pop! – a hunchback on a spring,
Who leaps about the hall to female squeals
Which soon subside to whispers. Pinkus Berg!
What boy now in Jerusalem, mouth open
Like me can't tear his olive eyes from you?
Winter and tiling. Just turn on the tap:
The icicles go tinkling round the basin,
And Gerda stares behind you. At your back
Moves death on skis, white like a Finnish soldier,
And brandishing his ski-sticks as he goes.
We've lost our bearings. All praise, o virus
Of cursed influenza. You have freedom.
Somewhere a city: on the edge. Out there
No law of quarantine has real existence.
A boy and a girl are sitting. In the dark
A knee is picked out by a hand, just like a ribbon.
Was I in love with her? If I'd known
Back then what things one might do to a woman,
I would have died: bullet through the brain.
Applause from all spectators. Every move
a lie. The belladonna
Dilates the pupils. And she sings on
'Arrividerci Ro...'. My brother now
Takes her away.
You'd never see a film like that today.
Translated by Alan Myers
Time was, remember, when you had to pay
To get on railway platforms and it cost
A rouble in the old money; back then
Weeping came quite easily, but these days –
-And these days have been going on for years –
That little lizard will not shed its scales.
A lizard flickered by just then. Rail car,
So narrow, feels as if my hands
Pressed throbbing temples.
We will not meet again. The guard is looking grim.
His whey face seems to melt there standing on his steps.
Just press against my lips and, like blowing glass
Will engineer that tender kiss transparent, fragile
And try to seize the lizard tail of loving.
A frontier town that tourists never see.
A handkerchief was needed for my eyes –
It's sheer affection: that self-same shade
That self-same pastel hint
Links uniforms and steppe-land
In one tint.
We will not meet again. The toilet on the station
A second's space, a handshake and we die,
I'll stagger back, inhaling rank carbolic,
My eyes will sense the old insistent pin-prick
That signals breakdown.
Translated by Alan Myers
FROM THE AUTHOR
Away all doubts! The reader is not fearful,
The reader likes the sharpest razor blades.
He would be glad to die along with me
Beneath a desk-lamp, from a bursting windpipe.
Am I mistaken? Well, let's not evade
Mistakes I have committed, nor my insights.
Why be bashful? When young, my little town
Drilled into bad taste, a lasting lesson –
Where pathos lingered, beauty lingered too,
Where life and death collided – that's where art was. Get on the saddle. Bicycle's at hand.
A one, a two. And off we fly. The fading
Familiar faces. Just the temple throb,
And an anorak that billows out behind me.
Hold on more tightly. Cable grips are snapped.
For us there can be no more thought of stopping.
A garden, look. That boy there: on his lips
There's cherryade, loose braces over shoulders.
The poplar's silver down and peeping through,
The Jewish quarter, like a home-baked loaf
With garlic well rubbed-in. Old women's eyes.
Just look. Inhale. You'll understand that fear
Along with water bursts out from the stand-pipes.
And tyres go hissing on. How steep the slope.
And dust gets in the tickles in the nostrils.
Now something stings my face. My ears still hear
It ring ' I love you!'. Tears held back by wind-force
Which brings salvation. Sheer drops of arms. Cliff faces. How frail
The cheerful whipping air-stream.
Dragonflies
Have made it seem transparent now and lighter,
Fragrant of cornflowers. Far away
The frontier, and railway carriage bustle,
The customs scrutiny. The mother of my friend
Now boards. Once more, once more, one final effort.
No helping them. The saddle-bag drums on.
We fly, dear reader! Spokes and sinews flexing.
I am here. With you. I'd love to take you too
Not down the hillside, but past the lip of nothing,
If only doubt would vanish...
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