FIVE POEMS

Translated from Russian by J. Kates

(untitled)

The need to think that death is near

This evening or half a century

But my life no more than a spark

Give it strength

Your face will shine

In other ages

It will remain

In me

As in a reflection

I have loved.

(untitled)

You taught me joy.

But we're separating . . .

I don't scream tragedy,

I loved, I laughed..

I go away,  laughing.

And if happiness exists,

Its nature is you.

And if I

Am looking for its like,

Then only

In someone

Like you.

Who can no longer be you.

(untitled)

And all the same

What is it I want?

The simplest words?

Meaning the simplest feelings?

Pen. Paper. A tall candle

And the Lord

taking care of me.

So we need

a parental eye

So we need to know

and feel

that we

Still weak

Still not alone

That God

Breathed

Meaning

Like a soul

Into the world.

JAZZ COMPOSITION

The saxophone like a flat-chested siren.

And what is a siren without breasts?

Seduction takes more than a voice.

And it doesn't take much of a voice

To seduce people — 

There's the misery of high art.

Let's strike up a melody

In the yawning quiet,

Where yawns

glow scarlet through our hands.

So, let's get started.

The melody

Spins in the treetops

Like a bird's cry, clumsy,

Black, like a raven's wing,

When the ravens come down on a field

And scoff up

The grain from the chopped stalks.

We see our own eyes in these kernels.

The saxophonist has frozen his fingers.

He warms them in his armpits.

They are as white as chalk.

His jacket stained with it.

Warm your hands at the fire,

Massage your palms.

Look into it.

The look itself will slowly sink

Into the deep-thinking fire.

Surrounded by blind night

like the lid of a dusty grand piano

where we can't see our reflection.

God, grant me such hands

To sculpt out shards of sound,

Like a stallion on the piano keys

With quick and easy hoofbeats.

God grant I be willing

To surrender to the joyful field,

Nothing but running.

And only the art of running

To leave behind

Something like a trace.

Look into the fire.

Then, when it goes out,

Turn your eyes from its glowing coals.

Forgetting poems

Forgetting the double bass

And the fact that he looks like a horse's haunch

Highlighted in the flickering flame.

Knowing

That he is not alone

That in the distance

In the darkness of the night,

There is the croup

The topline

The mare's muzzle

Drooling grassy saliva.

And in the morning

from the shore of a pond 

Step into it.

The clay sucks heat from your legs.

Wave the poplar fluff away.

In the nocturnal water

The sun will appear

Multiplied by a hundred

In the eyes of the ripples

And it will sound

Shrill and clean

And joyful

Like a bright trumpet,

On the lips

Of the red-faced

Like the neighing of a horse

Jazzman. 

1968

(untitled)

Here on my flowering eyes

The heavy dragonfly alights.

And in the scales of its wings

The sun breaks apart, multiplies, rejoices

And I am happy ...

                      The river floats in front of my eyes.

Peaceful and very deep.

Undistorted, I am reflected in the water,

I do not know why I bloom, I do not know where

But I know how —

A yellow water lily big as a fist,

And next to it someone blooms joyfully,

And a girl, leaning out of the boat, tears loose,

Pulling out of thick water

the long and slimy stalks.

And it was me she grabbed.

                                   I resist,

Pull away. Straining.

I tear loose.

1969