M.B. 

I threw my arms about those shoulders, glancing 

at what emerged behind that back, 

and saw a chair pushed slightly forward, 

merging now with the lighted wall. 

The lamp glared too bright to show 

the shabby furniture to some advantage, 

and that is why sofa of brown leather 

shone a sort of yellow in a corner. 

The table looked bare, the parquet glossy, 

the stove quite dark, and in a dusty frame 

a landscape did not stir. Only the sideboard 

seemed to me to have some animation. 

But a moth flitted round the room, 

causing my arrested glance to shift; 

and if at any time a ghost had lived here, 

he now was gone, abandoning this house.

Citizen, enemy, mama's boy, sucker, utter

garbage, panhandler, swine, refujew, verrucht;

a scalp so often scalded with boiling water

that the puny brain feels completely cooked.

Yes, we have dwelt here: in this concrete, brick, wooden

rubble which you now arrive to sift.

All our wires were crossed, barbed, tangled, or interwoven.

Also: we didn't love our women, but they conceived.

Sharp is the sound of pickax that hurts dead iron;

still, it's gentler than what we've been told or have said ourselves.

Stranger! move carefully through our carrion:

what seems carrion to you is freedom to our cells.

Leave our names alone. Don't reconstruct those vowels,

consonants, and so forth: they won't resemble larks

but a demented bloodhound whose maw devours 

its own traces, feces, and barks, and barks.

From Martial

Now is windy and the waves are cresting over 

Fall is soon to come to change the place entirely. 

Change of colors moves me, Postum, even stronger 

Than a girlfriend while she’s changing her attire. 

Maidens comfort you but to a certain limit — 

Can’t go further than an elbow or a kneeline. 

While apart from body, beauty is more splendid — 

An embrace is as impossible as treason. 

I’m sending to you, Postum-friend, some reading. 

How’s the capital? Soft bed and rude awakening? 

How’s Caesar? What’s he doing? Still intriguing? 

Still intriguing, I imagine, and engorging. 

In my garden, I am sitting with a night-light 

No maid nor mate, not even a companion 

But instead of weak and mighty of this planet, 

Buzzing pests in their unanimous dominion. 

Here, was laid away an Asian merchant. Clever 

Merchant was he — very diligent yet decent. 

He died suddenly — malaria. To barter 

Business did he come, and surely not for this one. 

Next to him — a legionnaire under a quartz grave. 

In the battles, he brought fame to the Empire. 

Many times could have been killed! Yet died an old brave. 

Even here, there is no ordinance, my dear. 

Maybe, chicken really aren’t birds, my Postum, 

Yet a chicken brain should rather take precautions. 

An empire, if you happened to be born to, 

better live in distant province, by the ocean. 

Far away from Caesar, and away from tempests 

No need to cringe, to rush or to be fearful, 

You are saying procurators are all looters, 

But I’d rather choose a looter than a slayer. 

Under thunderstorm, to stay with you, hetaera, — 

I agree but let us deal without haggling: 

To demand sesterces from a flesh that covers 

is the same as stripping roofs of their own shingle. 

Are you saying that I leak? Well, where’s a puddle? 

Leaving puddles hasn’t been among my habits. 

Once you find yourself some-body for a husband, 

Then you’ll see him take a leak under your blankets. 

Here, we’ve covered more than half of our life span 

As an old slave, by the tavern, has just said it, 

«Turning back, we look but only see old ruins». 

Surely, his view is barbaric, but yet candid. 

’ve been to hills and now busy with some flowers. 

Have to find a pitcher, so to pour them water. 

How’s in Libya, my Postum, or wherever? 

Is it possible that we are still at war there? 

You remember, friend, the procurator’s sister? 

On the skinny side, however with those plump legs. 

You have slept with her then... she became a priestess. 

Priestess, Postum, and confers with the creators. 

Do come here, we’ll have a drink with bread and olives — 

Or with plums. You’ll tell me news about the nation. 

In the garden you will sleep under clear heavens, 

And I’ll tell you how they name the constellations. 

Postum, friend of yours once tendered to addition, 

Soon shall reimburse deduction, his old duty… 

Take the savings, which you’ll find under my cushion. 

Haven’t got much but for funeral — it’s plenty. 

On your skewbald, take a ride to the hetaeras, 

Their house is right by the town limit, 

Bid the price we used to pay — for them to love us — 

They should now get the same — for their lament. 

Laurel’s leaves so green — it makes your body shudder. 

Wide ajar the door — a tiny window’s dusty — 

Long deserted bed — an armchair is abandoned — 

Noontime sun has been absorbed by the upholstery. 

With the wind, by sea point cape, a boat, is wrestling. 

Roars the gulf behind the black fence of the pine trees. 

On the old and wind-cracked bench — Pliny the Elder. 

And a thrush is chirping in the mane of cypress.

I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages,

carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters,

lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis,

dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles.

From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly

width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives rake my nitty-gritty.

Quit the country the bore and nursed me.

Those who forgot me would make a city.

I have waded the steppes that saw yelling Huns in saddles,

worn the clothes nowadays back in fashion in every quarter,

planted rye, tarred the roofs of pigsties and stables,

guzzled everything save dry water.

I've admitted the sentries' third eye into my wet and foul

dreams. Munched the bread of exile; it's stale and warty.

Granted my lungs all sounds except the howl;

switched to a whisper. Now I am forty.

What should I say about my life? That it's long and abhors transparence.

Broken eggs make me grieve; the omelet, though, makes me vomit.

Yet until brown clay has been rammed down my larynx,

only gratitude will be gushing from it.

In such an inexplicable blue, 

Upon the stonework to embark, 

The little ship of glowing hue 

Appears in Alexander Park. 

The little lamp, a yellow rose, 

Arising -- ready to retreat -- 

Above the people it adores; 

Near strangers' feet. 

In such an inexplicable blue 

The drunkards' hive, the loonies' team. 

A tourist takes a snapshot to 

Have left the town and keep no dream. 

On the Ordynka street you find 

A taxicab with fevered gnomes, 

And dead ancestors stand behind 

And lean on domes. 

A poet strolls across the town 

In such an inexplicable blue. 

A doorman watches him looking down 

And down the street and catches the flu. 

An old and handsome cavalier 

Moves down a lane not worth a view, 

And wedding-party guests appear 

In such an inexplicable blue. 

Behind the river, in the haar, 

As a collection of the blues -- 

The yellow walls reflecting far 

The hopeless accent of the Jews. 

You move to Sunday, to despair 

(From love), to the New Year, and there 

Appears a girl you cannot woo -- 

Never explaining why she's blue. 

Then in the night the town is lost; 

A train is clad in silver plush. 

The pallid puff, the draught of frost 

Will sheathe your face until you blush. 

The honeycomb of windows fits 

The smell of halva and of zest, 

While Christmas Eve is carrying its 

Mince pies abreast. 

Watch your New Year come in a blue 

Seawave across the town terrain 

In such an inexplicable blue, 

As if your life can start again, 

As if there can be bread and light -- 

A lucky day -- and something's left, 

As if your life can sway aright, 

Once swayed aleft.

My dear Telemachus,

The Trojan War 

is over now; I don't recall who won it. 

The Greeks, no doubt, for only they would leave

so many dead so far from their own homeland. 

But still, my homeward way has proved too long. 

While we were wasting time there, old Poseidon, 

it almost seems, stretched and extended space.

I don't know where I am or what this place 

can be. It would appear some filthy island, 

with bushes, buildings, and great grunting pigs. 

A garden choked with weeds; some queen or other. 

Grass and huge stones... Telemachus, my son! 

To a wanderer the faces of all islands 

resemble one another. And the mind 

trips, numbering waves; eyes, sore from sea horizons, 

run; and the flesh of water stuffs the ears. 

I can't remember how the war came out; 

even how old you are--I can't remember.

Grow up, then, my Telemachus, grow strong. 

Only the gods know if we'll see each other 

again. You've long since ceased to be that babe 

before whom I reined in the plowing bullocks. 

Had it not been for Palamedes' trick 

we two would still be living in one household. 

But maybe he was right; away from me 

you are quite safe from all Oedipal passions, 

and your dreams, my Telemachus, are blameless.

...and when "the future" is uttered, swarms of mice

rush out of the Russian language and gnaw a piece

of ripened memory which is twice 

as hole-ridden as real cheese.

After all these years it hardly matters who

or what stands in the corner, hidden by heavy drapes,

and your mind resounds not with a seraphic "doh",

only their rustle. Life, that no one dares

to appraise, like that gift horse's mouth,

bares its teeth in a grin at each

encounter. What gets left of a man amounts

to a part. To his spoken part. To a part of speech.

Darling, you think it's love, it's just a midnight journey. 

Best are the dales and rivers removed by force, 

as from the next compartment throttles "Oh, stop it, Bernie," 

yet the rhythm of those paroxysms is exactly yours. 

Hook to the meat! Brush to the red-brick dentures, 

alias cigars, smokeless like a driven nail! 

Here the works are fewer than monkey wrenches, 

and the phones are whining, dwarfed by to-no-avail. 

Bark, then, with joy at Clancy, Fitzgibbon, Miller. 

Dogs and block letters care how misfortune spells. 

Still, you can tell yourself in the john by the spat-at mirror, 

slamming the flush and emerging with clean lapels. 

Only the liquid furniture cradles the dwindling figure. 

Man shouldn't grow in size once he's been portrayed. 

Look: what's been left behind is about as meager 

as what remains ahead. Hence the horizon's blade.

I was but what you'd brush 

with your palm, what your leaning 

brow would hunch to in evening's 

raven-black hush. 

I was but what your gaze 

in that dark could distinguish: 

a dim shape to begin with, 

later - features, a face. 

It was you, on my right, 

on my left, with your heated 

sighs, who molded my helix 

whispering at my side. 

It was you by that black 

window's trembling tulle pattern 

who laid in my raw cavern 

a voice calling you back. 

I was practically blind. 

You, appearing, then hiding, 

gave me my sight and heightened 

it. Thus some leave behind 

a trace. Thus they make worlds. 

Thus, having done so, at random 

wastefully they abandon 

their work to its whirls. 

Thus, prey to speeds 

of light, heat, cold, or darkness, 

a sphere in space without markers 

spins and spins.

The stone-built villages of England. 

A cathedral bottled in a pub window. 

Cows dispersed across fields. 

Monuments to kings. 

A man in a moth-eaten suit 

sees a train off, heading, like everything here, for the sea, 

smiles at his daughter, leaving for the East. 

A whistle blows. 

And the endless sky over the tiles 

grows bluer as swelling birdsong fills. 

And the clearer the song is heard, 

the smaller the bird.

There is a meadow in Sweden

where I lie smitten,

eyes stained with clouds'

white ins and outs.

And about that meadow

roams my widow

plaiting a clover

wreath for her lover.

I took her in marriage

in a granite parish.

The snow lent her whiteness, 

a pine was a witness.

She'd swim in the oval

lake whose opal 

mirror, framed by bracken,

felt happy broken.

And at night the stubborn

sun of her auburn

hair shone from my pillow

at post and pillar.

Now in the distance

I hear her descant. She sings "Blue Swallow,"

but I can't follow.

The evening shadow 

robs the meadow

of width and color.

It's getting colder.

As I lie dying 

here, I'm eyeing

stars.Here's Venus;

no one between us.

Everything has its limit, including sorrow.

A windowpane stalls a stare. Nor does a grill abandon

a leaf. One may rattle the keys, gurgle down a swallow.

Loneliness cubes a man at random.

A camel sniffs at the rail with a resentful nostril;

a perspective cuts emptiness deep and even.

And what is space anyway if not the

body's absence at every given

point? That's why Urania's older than sister Clio!

In daylight or with the soot-rich lantern,

you see the globe's pate free of any bio,

you see she hides nothing, unlike the latter.

There they are, blueberry-laden forests,

rivers where the folk with bare hands catch sturgeon

or the towns in whose soggy phone books

you are starring no longer; farther eastward surge on

brown mountain ranges; wild mares carousing

in tall sedge; the cheekbones get yellower

as they turn numerous. And still farther east, steam

dreadnoughts or cruisers,

and the expanse grows blue like lace underwear.

The perilous yellow sun follows with its slant eyes

masts of the shuddered grove steaming up to capsize

in the frozen straits of Epiphany. February has fewer

days than the other months; therefore, it's more cruel

than the rest. Dearest, it's more sound

to wrap up our sailing round 

the globe with habitual naval grace,

moving your cot to the fireplace

where our dreadnought is going under

in great smoke. Only fire can grasp a winter!

Golder unharnessed stallions in the chimney

dye their manes to more corvine shades as they near the finish,

and the dark room fills with the plaintive, incessant chirring

of a naked, lounging grasshopper one cannot cup in fingers.