War of the Beasts and the Animals

Spreading and taking hold in the animal body.

Oh how it foams,

Full of the dark fruits

Veiled over with a dull-blue film

Like the eye of a dying bird.

(He knows

Will he help?

Will he mix the wine with water?

Turn out the sleepless plasma screen?)

We deny, we turn away,

We walk the road step by step

Breathing with our eyes, hardly able to bear each other up,

We see acorns, fixed in the dirt clay:

Morning, morning is here!

How many of you there were, acorns.

The ones without caps,

The shaved heads of Cossacks

Burnt black in the sun,

Hardened, with long running scars.

And the ones like children, thick-walled,

Tiny barrels, big-headed boys,

So very sure of themselves

Born for the palm of the hand.

For the roll of the fist, for the life in a pocket

(A pitch dark, populous, perspiring pocket?)

In somebody’s possibly kindly grasp.

You aren’t for growing, for unfurling

You aren’t for rupturing the paper earth,

And humming from root to topmost leaf,

Like a hive interrupted.

Nor for the extending of a ship’s long deck

Or for the wearing of a feast on your back

Or for the lying as someone else’s bed.

You were meant for another purpose.

The squirrel busies itself, the wind passes through

Rat-a-tat!

One by one, two by two

All they know is how to fall on the road

Where they lie, as they must.

Fish

In a tin bath, a tin bath she lay

We poured water in, and mixed in some salt

One man got drunk, another repaired the transmitter,

A fourth man wandered the shore in lament:

What would he tell his grandchildren, but I digress:

Speaks no English, has not expressed hunger,

Still one should do something – cook, or offer something raw.

This cannot be, it simply cannot be.

Eyes – hungry, wide-lipped, hair

Like wet hay, pale as ice and smelling of vodka;

If it turns on its side even slightly, a line

Of vertebrae knots the length of the back, like on yours.

Not a word of Russian, most likely Finno-Ugric

But sadly no experts were at hand

When the nets were cast in hope that morning

And the beast smiled and beat its tail in greeting.

Twilight, tins were opened, lamps brought in.

Cards and a chessboard appeared without undue haste.

I try debating with our mechanic, but he won’t take the bait.

A quick check-over (Witnessed by. Sign on dotted.) –

Not long enough. Only first observations,

Weight: sixty. Length of tail: ninety.

Jagged wounds in the abdominal area

Mostly likely caused by a sharp object.

Not long enough. Only early theories,

There is no time. The reestablishing of radio contact

Keeping the hut warm, catching fish.

Eats the fish with us all, very neat and tidy

Can’t stand coffee, refuses to wear clothes;

Measured the diameter of nipple; change tub water

Morning and evening; the thing sleeps hugging tail.

Can’t tell faces apart. Doesn’t remember names.

Not long enough, just come from the radio engineer

Have suspicions someone sabotaging radio

And emergency generator, work out why

No point in working out why, still I do believe we will meet.

Better to put the notes into code, put all notes into code,

At eighteen hundred last night another helicopter over the pines

Rapid pulse, slight nausea

Splashing and laughter from behind the calico curtain.

Yesterday and today let fish out for a swim.

I stood guard with a pike, Petrov had a carbine.

Didn’t attempt to slip away, only splashed around;

Water temperature; body temperature;

Possible uses for the purpose of fishing.

I ran along the shore, pretending to be a hunter.

It dived in and out gently, to no good purpose,

Wet, white-toothed and gleaming.

Only now: is it happening, I can’t tell

Two hours of pointless conversation

In the cold about the radio and the spares,

A sprint back to the hut. Silence behind the curtain.

And no one there, behind the curtain. The tub upturned.

Smoke in the mess room, I step in a puddle

And there, to the soothing hiss of the radio

The fish and the mechanic are playing snap.

Not long enough, not up to it, the thing is sick

And smells less like vodka, more like moonshine

Distended pupil, sweats, palpitations,

Listless, lethargic, no appetite,

No communications, no photographic equipment

Filth, fishscales amongst the medical instruments

Dreamt of God again, the rotating propeller

The pines bending, and the noise of the rotor.

It’s Petrov again: doctor, he says, doctor —

It’s quiet behind the curtain. The tub is empty.

The mechanic had a flask of spirits, a secret.

I don’t object, let the fish swim. On the floor

A wet scarf, fish likes to keep its throat covered

Although what use a scarf is to it, I don’t know.

From the window astoundingly clear on the bay’s shining

Surface, the head of a swimmer moving forever beyond range.

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Must concentrate on essentials: we are flying away.

Despite the care I took in sabotaging the transmitter

It was put to rights painstakingly, more than once

And then there was no reason to put it off waiting

For the helicopter, for the helicopter waiting, waiting.