DEPARTING EN MASSE
Good bye dear Earth! Good by dear Animals!
We will be back but may be not exactly
upon your back dear Earth and not amongst you dear
Animals. We will arrive in boats of white and blue.
And you will recognize us just like a mother
in the secret knowledge of a birthmark
would recognize a beggar as her long-lost child
and fall upon her knees and sob and wail
her soul reborn because she is a mother.
But how will be able to recognize you then
if in a dark and gloomy world
we find the kindness of a brother in a stone
and everything lights up and all souls are reborn
then we shell know: we have returned back home!
LION
Sweet smells on the new council blocks.
The washing hangs damp with our night-dreams' tears.
And the summer is shining on bicycles
as if the day has been sheared
and the fear has already passed.
Last night:
there were those who shearing
and those spinning yarn
from the gingery wool.
Today:
they are all smiling happily
they still smell
of lion.
GREEN AND GOLDEN
A male carnation
and a female vase.
I'm just a tiny leaf
perched on the vase's edge
upon the sill.
Now:
take the ancient leaf -
it shivers yet it proudly glows
between the endless skies above
and Homer down below.
Now:
golden is the tip
of the Byzantine leaf.
It shimmers from mosaics bound in silver
remembering the crucifixion and the grief.
And now:
consider me -
a poet, and artistically grumpy
exuding smells of earth and heaven -
a leaf that has been crumpled.
The vase is female the carnation's male.
A lamp-shade oozes chlorophyll
a green man's crawling up the curtain rail.
EVAPORATION
Warm living flowers
thirstily yearning
for rain and for poetry.
A grasshopper is hopping
a leap from the green to the pink
and on to the yellow
where a different colour
is seeping through different hues:
an explosion of colours
a suddenness
like the twitch of a snake
in the grass.
It is time. But I can't choose a name for myself -
rain is falling and washing the letters away.
And I leap up to see
why the grasshopper's leapt and hopped before me.
So I came upon words that fly in the sky
pouring buckets of water and lore from above.
Higher up the rain is much warmer
there names
therefore always turn into vapour.
LION AND ROSE
Two blooming roses - a lion's eyes
a lion's mane - the rose's guise.
I was standing in a field
thinking: no, you can not yield
a roar from a precious flower
nor feed with nettles the lion's power.
But all that's great and grand and regal
is also weird and illegal:
roses roar by way of pricking
lions stroke me gently licking.
So I rushed and wrote this down:
there may be a path around
leading to what we conceive
that the mind cannot achieve -
two blooming roses - a lion's eyes
a lion's mane - the rose's guise.
INSIDE AND OUTSIDE AND A DOG
If you should find a burrowed hole
do settle in.
And when your dog arrives
and begs you to come out
just shove him through your eyes
deep inside you.
But don't forget to tie his leash to your nose
or else he may just get lost in the desert.
In there thirst will make him dig a well
or he may even come upon a spa-spring
and your desert will be turned into
rice paddies and voluptuous meadows.
But if the spring turns out to be too strong
you will get drowned. And so will your dog.
And then you will yourself become a well
and maidens fetching water from the well
will sing your ballad.
THE GOLDENS AND THE CRIMSONS
The golden ones were shining.
While the crimson ones were drenched in blood.
And in the middle:
mountains full of reason -
the tall blue mountains of our rhyming dreams.
The golden ones kept quiet.
While the crimson ones were singing -
their happy song resounding through the gardens
where thousands such as them
were blossoming and withering away.
But all the golden ones would do
was shine in silence -
and that in essence was the reason
encompassing the mountains and the gardens.
The crimson ones still sang
about their contribution to the shining.
Until in winter:
the golden ones were shining
while the crimson ones had faded.
Then Christmas came:
the golden ones were dead.
VITA NOVA
They lead an easy life. They nibble nuts and bolts.
They stroke their mother - the conveyor belt.
While she is busy giving birth ten times an hour:
and some of their brothers turn out to be ships
while others turn out to be robots.
The ships begin to float.
The robots start to walk.
How do you live today
my friend dear robot?
Those times were hard
and life was rather different.
But now you have it all
your mouth is full
and like a sprouting sapling
joy grows in you today.
You freely hop about
up in the poisoned sky.
FRIENDS
There is no hiding place
For man who`s reached so far
Who in the shadow of his race
In anguish searches for his star.
And then he rises and he turns
The switch of a machine. At last
The sacred oaths and vows he spurns
And flies away from dust and past.
He rises up into the void
Where - lo! - his fevered brow is eased
By a caress from an android
Who this endeavour sacred leads.
And so an ox sets out at first light -
So burdened down by weighty plough
An anguished bellow echoing his plight
As he contemplates the path of furrow -
So man and ship awake and rise
And, grim in their joint embrace
They pray for their last demise -
Their breathing chokes; their pulses race.
Oh, where will they at last find rest?
Where is the last star to be found?
The Universe will stretch its chest,
As does a beggar in the sun.
MELANCHOLY
Robots and ships are floating above me
I've been drowned in the air.
Observing my loves
caressing my souls
I am swinging.
Robots and ships
filled with corruption and relative values
are returning from work
(homebound from India).
I alone remain idle and lazy
I listen to music I fall on my back
they pass and salute me
and rest.
TRIANGULAR LOVERS
We are appalled by space
unless we can fill it with objects.
We are frightened by time
unless we can dress it in events:
such geometric nudity is persecuting us
as if
a couple of triangles mate
and give birth to a square.
TRANSPORTING THE EARTH
Blessed with the beauty of an egg and female charms
You spin away in the eternity of space.
And robots carry you in their arms
While mankind shrives in your cold embrace.
I used to tell myself: you'd better miss a cue
I used to think: you'd better keep your head down.
But what I'd yearned for in my dreams came true -
It made me feel like an intoxicated clown.
The lack of words born out of earth and pry
Is, frankly speaking, filling me with fright.
So now we add up rhymes and bones by day
And then we put them back again by night.
How verse has let us down and killed all mirth -
This goddess of the willows and the wheat.
How blood and screams are marking every birth,
How blending souls with rain is still the poet's treat.
But there's more important matter here:
Our grieving spirits want to be machines.
The robots pass and quickly disappear
The sound of music is becoming mean.
I say therefore: let's sing a song let's rage
Let's look above in space - against all odds
Machines will raise us on the pedestal of age
They will be our humans and we'll be their Gods.
Translations: Vallery Chukov
