where one must reach through April and January,
and the divided world stands in a budding lie,
and the budding lie is deposited in the earth forever.
We purchase freedom in seconds, to no avail,
they give us vouchers for plucked gray wings.
We behave ourselves well—and so we are freed from life
ahead of time—skyward, before it closes.
I write to you from the East, a land of strange cities,
mine, for instance—it stretches out forever beyond,
in the morning engulfed in a searing white gloom,
while at night the coarse, furious truth crawls out.
The snow lies in the house, at the doorstep trouble awaits,
and rain cascades down—or days slip through one’s fingers.
Through the dusk of time, fate led us here—
oh, how sweetly, how sweetly and awfully
the motherland reeks!
I write to you from the East, from the gloom-shrouded rivers
over which souls fly—scraps of white cotton.
What is left for me? is anything left for me?
so one must write, write, write.
*
The sun is grimy, in the sky two old scratches—
a trail of planes, and underneath streetlights hum.
The souls of snails glide over melting snowbanks,
a home upon the back and a green glow above.
You see—a house upon the back, in this world or the next,
a dangerous world, smelling of wolves and armored fish
they dig underground depths, and at last
a real house is built for us all—a paper airplane.
You know, this world—it is not ours, it is just a dull, burning needle
driven into the heart, white threads stretched out,
white, gauzy threads in our little mouse huts . . .
What do we need a house for? to entertain doubts
Doubts, like worms, crawled out after rains.
Doubts, like worms, crushed by our tanks.
God does not consider people, just a heap of ash remains . . .
The room is quiet, the floors washed, so what, then, have you trampled on again?
*
Reach, reach my dead rhizomes
to a month, to another life,
there, for a month, baskets are made of leaves,
and into each oblivion is put little by little.
My house slips away. It slips away, like a fish
from the hand, strange and bent, standing in the distance,
my will round my neck—like an unyielding noose
and I am already fine in this hellish abode.
In a month all is broken steps,
my gray cat and ungainly coat,
red pupils of old photographs
on faces that no one knows.
These small, tormented flowers are for luck
at least, they will defend us from the past.
And under the black trembling sky, like a fairy tale,
soar the black streets of a black city.
*
My city, covered in wounds,
crawls at night to the hospital,
down the road the line snakes
and stretches until dawn,
while heard from all corners
—Mama, please, Mama,
hide me in a hole
in the furthest wasteland,
why do you not rejoice, Mama, at your oldest son
returned to visit you,
he stands in the corner, as in childhood,
twenty years old—darkness and memory ahead,
he hoped to stand a hero, but stood on brittle ice.
My city gasps, but the doctor is serene,
he who saw mobs of mangled and mutilated,
would have finished his cigarette, but was called out again,
while across the damp ceiling a black cockroach creeps.
The son turned to air and smoke, and light at the tunnel’s end,
ropes choke the air, cables clench the path,
don’t give me up, Mama, I brought a clean bandage,
Mama, there, beyond the horizon, flies a half-dead bird.
Mama, do you see me? in the sky flies a rag,
the air—like glass in the lungs, and in the heart black water.
The green glow above—already how many years
has the bird been flying half-dead, flying to its nest.
