Let this air be witness,
with its long-range heart,
and the omnivorous, active, earthen house,
the ocean without window—matter . . .
How denouncing are the stars!
They have to look at it all—for what?
In condemnation of the judge and witness,
in the ocean without window, matter.
The rain remembers, cheerless sower,
his nameless manna—
how a woodland of small crosses marked
the ocean or the battle formation.
There will be people, cold and frail,
to kill, to freeze, to starve,
and unknown soldiers laid
in their renowned graves.
Teach me, frail swallow,
who has forgotten how to fly,
how to get the best of this ethereal grave
without wing or rudder.
And for Mikhail Lermontov
I’ll give you a strict account,
of how the grave instructs the stooped
and the ethereal hole attracts.
2
Grapes stirring to life,
these worlds threaten us,
and stolen cities hang,
golden slips of the tongue, sneaks,
poisonous cold berries—
tensile constellations’ tents,
gold constellations’ tallow . . .
3
Through the decimal-denoted ether
light ground into the speeds of a beam
begins the tally, made transparent
by bright pain and molecular zeroes.
And beyond the field of fields, a new field,
the triangular flight of cranes,
the news flies with dustylight newness,
from yesterday’s combat light.
The news flies with dustylight newness:
—I am not Leipzig, I am not Waterloo,
I am not the Battle of the Nations, I am new,
from me will come the light of lights.
4
Arabian mash, medley,
light ground into the speeds of a beam,
and with its oblique soles
the beam stands on my retina.
Millions killed cheaply
beat a path into the void—
good night! All the best to them
on behalf of earthly citadels!
Incorruptible trench of sky—
huge sky of wholesale deaths,—
for you, from you, entirely,
I rush my lips in the dark—
for craters, for embankments, scree
on which he hesitated and hazed:
turned upside down—dull, smallpoxed
and belittled—the genius of graves.
5
The infantry die quite well,
and well sings the choir of night
over the flattened grin of Schweik
and over Don Quixote’s avian lance,
and his chivalrous, bird’s metatarsus.
And the cripple is friends with the man—
they will both find work,
and a little family of wooden crutches
will knock at the village gate of the age:
hey comradeship, globe of the earth!
6
Must the skull develop
within the whole brow—from temple to temple—
so that troops may be poured
into its precious eyesockets?
Developing from life, the skull,
within the whole brow—from temple to temple,—
the purity of its seams teases itself,
the dome’s clear understanding,
thought foams, dreams to itself,—
of the cup’s cup and the fatherland’s fatherland,
starry ribs of a sewn cap,
cap of happiness—Shakespeare’s father . . .
7
Ash-clarity, sycamore-vigilance,
a little red rushes into their house,
as though fainting, glutting
the sky of both with their dull fire.
We are allied only with that which is excessive:
ahead is not failure, but a sounding,
and a struggle for living air—
this glory is no example for others.
And half-fainting existence
glutting my conscience,
will I have no choice but to drink this broth,
eat my own head under fire?
Was it for this the tare was prepared,
enchantment in empty space,
so that white stars will go back,
a little red rushed into their house?
Do you hear, stepmother of the starry camp,
night, what will be this time, and afterwards?
8
Aortas fill with blood,
and whispers sound in the rows:
—I was born in ninety-four,
I was born in ninety-two . . . —
and clamped in my fist the worn
year of my birth—with the crowd and the herd
I whisper with my bloodless mouth:
—I was born in the night of the second to the third
of January in the unreliable year
of ninety-one—and the centuries
surround me with fire.
February–April 1937
