The violence of the edge
Calls you to your senses,
You feel the blow and learn,
Against your will…
There will always be a master,
A tormentor;
Freedom is not in the contract.
Drink to the bottom of the bottle,
And find what lies there,
But paradise it will not be.
Snowdrops in spring,
Smell of cabbage on the landing….
Like an old man playing chess
Against the ghosts,
I sit with my pen and paper,
Feeling with my mind
The naked body of a dancer….
The city is covered with dust,
As if already in ruins,
Another civilization expired.
Heathen devotions-
Indo-European roots,
Hieroglyphic as horses’ hooves-
I lay at the blue Virgin’s
Crimson-slippered feet,
(Byzantine empress of martyrdoms,
All those living dead buried
Under the steppe grass)
In Santa Sofia, offering sacrifice
To Jehovah, Yahweh, Perun.
Between Poland and Russia,
Baptized in the river,
Restless Cossack words
Saddle their nightmares and ride.
After all the rhetoric
The truth is as clear and deadly
As vodka, dark and weird
As the legends you raise
In a clanking old bucket
From a village well.
No comments:
Post a Comment