War of the Beasts and the Animals

Feeling the universe’s cold hand

On his shoulder, and the sky

Distends like a toad’s gland

He’s run away – from his father’s military gait

From his mother’s silken tights

And he’s squared his chest to seem older

But today didn’t go right.

How he aches to be cultured, a sportsman

More bronzed, more related to glass.

Listen to the urns’ courtship

And the trees’ hollows gasp:

You want this park to like you,

You, and those plump little brides,

But can you be sure your betrothed

Is no frog, and doesn’t eat flies –

Or that the bulge of her goitre

In an unnatural blue

Is just a dome of sounds and lines

For the sky to breathe through?

Pop! Despair. The balloon disappears

Scraps of rubber fall and lie

Where a widow, crouched in the grass,

Shares a quiet cigarette with the boy.

*

Running, running

On our last legs

Across the prone empire

Along the longest drags

The tundra is never-ending

The dogs bark never-ending

The watchman is stood unbending

(though his job is dead-ending)

The curses are never-ending

The journey is never-ending

The heavenly valleys sounding

With machine gun fire resounding

From where the firmament is bending

And the body feels its own ending

But it’s like it’s been ground to chaff

And tastes in the throat like a laugh

Tickling and distending –

A kind of happy ending

And running, running to ground

Seems a lot like lying down.

*

By the church’s black fence

I sit with a crooked smile

On a standard issue bench

At Shrovetide

Heavenly birds are sitting

On my puffy knees

Bright-eyed, hopping and shitting

Such gentle scolds

Why am I holding

A box of metal and glass?

Why, for you to cast in coins

Whenever you pass.

In the church, nannies with babies

Inhale the heavy psalms

They emerge soft, like after the bathhouse,

And willingly give me alms

For my red brick body

Tight coil of my life

I’d be in the earth by now

If I hadn’t wanted to die.

But the doves rise with a crack

Their wings clatter, unfold.

Like a bush sprang from my back

Doves sprout on my shoulders.

And to the passing glance

I am both clothed and stripped bare

I am my own tomb and fence

My own mother, my own wife dear. 

Kireevsky

1

The light swells and pulses at the garden gate

Rolls itself up, rolls itself out

Smetana, the very best – open up, mamma

Sweet lady, unlatching a casement – the best and the finest!

O black-throated Smetana, flame up

O white-winged Smetana, flare high

I’m no Lenten gruel, no scourge of sultanas

No faceless soup of curds for convicts

Don’t you dare compare my cream of ermine!

Are you pleased with a simple-minded cheese?

As the land rises and falls in hills and valleys

I’m shaped in living lipids and calories

Congealed unconcealed made gloriously manifest

Turned from one side to another and back again

Who will take up a silver spoon to muddy

My lilac-hued body?

And you, my light, barely at the threshold

Little fool, my light, never where I need you

You effulgent, I gently melting

I gently melting, I slightly smelling

And down there, where life rustles in the undergrowth

A tiny frog sits and croaks

Swells and croaks. Croaks and swells

And lifts its front legs to protect itself.

 

 

Smetana is Russian sour cream

2

In the village, in the field, in the forest

A coach rattled past, a carriage

A smart little trap with a hood like a wing

From the big city they came, from Kazan,

At the turning of the year, with caskets and coffers

To carry out an inspection, a census:

Oh the forest is full of souls, and the water’s flow,

Many souls in the hamlet, and in the oak tree, too

And day wanders the wood, walking into the wind

All its own self long, on the spoor of the hind.

And the circles of dancers – still traces in the ground

The lips of hired weepers – not yet shrivelled

And all of it, even the young Cleïs,

Recorded in the book of conscience

And behind the gilded crest stamped on the boards

They barely dare to scratch or burp.

3

Tear tears along, chasing tear, and kicks it

When it’s down: Turn the other cheek, tear!

I’m trailing you, I’m on your track,

Blinking at you like a lighted spill

Making the walls reel, like a lighted match.

Tease me, tear, you madcap

Be my healer:

You, my little book, me your reader.

Tear answers tear:

Nivermore, tear, rest you nighwhere

Beyond the hermit’s lonely rock-fault

I will return to you as rocksalt.

4

My lady neighbour drives out on black sables

Riding hood laughing, her mittens speak in riddles

Three fields she passed, and the fourth a rise,

Into the yard like thunder she rides.

Her neighbour sits stunned – hey, neighbour, budge up

Not often a vixen comes to sup!

Offer her honey in the bowl of your paw

Put her to bed on the bench in the warmth.

She will then set up such a howling:

The master’s right burns bright as a barn

A mother’s caress is still as a millpond

And if you thirst and drop your snout down in

A pail, there’s not enough water to drink or to drown in

5

Where the dance was shaped in flame:

Stand away – you’ll see it’s still burning now

Flames without heat, fire without sense, inextinguishable