War of the Beasts and the Animals

from the regional office

how long, my dear

have we been travelling

over this bridge in our little car

will we ever leave this place

*

the high towers are lit up red

and on them tall flags are talking

in the skies the stars assemble in rows

and jet planes, rising

tanks on parade with heavy paunches

armoured chariots

dolphin-heroes

swallow-martyrs

lions picked for their stature, their roar

people people and people

above them floats apple blossom

scented buds of white acacia

crinkle-edged paper poppies

heads

on poles

*

apparition of these faces in the metro

lamps on a wet black wire

*

Instead of scribbles in soft pencil lead:

Spinnrade         the brook          the mill weir,

You find the homunculus stone dead

His foetal hands pressed to his ears,

And guards to the left and the right of the door

And the party spirit in proletarian literature

You’ll stand in the entrance hall to read your verse

The stitches drawn so tight you’ll forget all the words.

—

Plush Soviet rose

Drilling the briar shoot

But the shoot sows

Itself silently, hides deep among the roots

You beat to death those without babble

And honour those without grace

But if you look with a gaze that is level

The spines have grown on your face.

—

See how Pushkin’s cobbler

Measures the foot with a sole

The litigant follows his example

And the author is tied to a pole.

But it’s Pushkin’s miller!

The auditorium is slowly filling

A re-educated pine tall as a pillar

Stretches            confesses it was once a willow

*

………

*

and so I decided

it was told to me that I should think back

so I thought back

and remembered

and it upset me

so I went and died

I died

and nothing came of it

apart from books

which came at some point

after fifty years

and former men

lost the form they once had

*

tell her to come out and say something

(coo-ey! calls war)

and the dog-heart growls and shrinks

and the son is born on the barracks floor

two friends lived like ya and you

and if one of them said yes

the underground water rose in the darkness

I’ll sing of that soon

no says the other

no and that is an end

there are no children in the army

which is made up of many men

but the friends could say nothing

when I sprang forth

between tree bole and gun bore

my cradle was caught

*

before the great war the apples were so fine

you might have heard that once at market – but who’s left alive

*

click

trigger (shutter) cocked

chink     viewfinder       sight

the photographer takes the picture

(things are taken from their places)

trans-ferr-al

and trans-ition trans-lates the space anew

(where corpses lie alongside the quick)

trans-humans transhumance

ex-isled con-sumers

jesters creatives

students

peasants

(great-grandfather grigory with his two hands

factory machine will chew off the right hand, but later,

great-grandfather whose face I never saw)

gawpers and gazers, proceeding arm-in-arm

and jews unassigned scattered

(we-jews)

o what bewildering confusion

from wild profusion

click

springtime, green garden, maytime

brooch at her throat, hair gathered in a bun

my grandmother (only a little older than me)

feeding a squirrel in a park on the outskirts of moscow

lonely soldier drinking mineral with syrup

school uniform, fitting room, apron-winged, unhemmed

festive streets, the houses and pavements illuminated in tiny lights

five-year-old mother flicks her silken ribbon

looks

click

click

wide-hipped rowing boats drawn up on the shore

their hulls bright in the sun

gondola swings flying over the abyss

a gypsy camp by the roadside, surly children in headscarves

home for former revolutionaries, two old ladies on a bench

(one is mine)

crimea, nineteen thirty eight, cascades of bathing beauties

(which one’s you)

croquet on the dacha lawn, moscow region

twenty years later in forty three

siberia, in evacuation

a headless cockerel and it swooped dead through the yard

head lying in the grass

and all the radio stations of the soviet union are speaking

accountant overwhelmed by numbers

nurse                  (made it to berlin)

seventeen-year-old nanny

shoeshiner from the next stairwell

geologist recently released from his second sentence

gynaecologist

lecturer at the institute of architecture

vasya (who?) from solyanka street

woman from local health inspectorate

twenty-year-old lyodik killed in action

his father, a volunteer, bombed troop train

his mother who lived right up until death

a little girl who will remember all this

relatives from saratov and leningrad

inhabitants of khabarovsk and gorky

and those I have forgotten

and pushkin pushkin of course

everyone round a laden table

ninth of may victory celebration

windows thrown back radio on

victoria herself sitting at the table

singing the blue scarf song singing schubert

as if there were no death

*

so what bounds Russia, said the crippled man

you know very well what bounds it, said the crippled man

and every span of her earth

and every step in her dust

is a step towards border control

across no man’s land

and the sky drawn up close

all the better to gape

oh this place, place, where boundaries are everywhere

everywhere junctions connections between this world and that