Poems

First, we forget the voice
Then, the color of hair and eyes
A while later, the face
Now we can only remember them;
Our closest friends, our trusted friends
Like mirages far across three thousand seas
Then, we forget the city with the road numbers and names.
With the graves covered in weeds.
Now we can only have far away memories
Of our abandoned city, our ill city,
Is it so because of us?
So what grows next to grandma’s grave?
A birch, an oak, a poplar?
Whose whispers will be there instead of our voices?
The weeds bleed, like eyes, like night ashes,
Like the dumplings with cherries that grandma used to bake us.

Everywhere there is water
Everywhere there is grass
You swim across, and there is still more water
You fly across, and there is still more grass
And people rush from water to water from grass to grass.
And also, there are deserts.

We walk inside the house and lock up the sky, the roads, and the people
And in this locked world, there is a trolley,
The horned angel of the waters and the seas
It rides to the Marshall Islands where the needlefish graze in wheat fields
Where the thirteen kind-hearted cows live
The horned angels too, with the eyes of everlasting children
With the spots of sun on their skin.
So, why, why do they lock us away from these beauties?
Someone, unlock the Marshall Islands!

The spinning snow, the tiny dots,
It is so cold and icy.
New Year’s Day crept upon us one night.
People argued in the subway
And sang rock in the elevators,
So when did the year’s numbers change?
No one knows.
Hello, new hopes and sorrows!
But I feel sorry about the things of last year.
I even feel sorry for our sad days.
Why?
Because they will never come back.
The New Year will bring only good things.
It will fix all of the bad or just send it away.
In a year, won't we be saying the same words?
The New Year crept upon in the middle of the winter.

Now that I have sent the computer worlds away
I do only that, which does not make me vomit
Eating plankton and the fish that eat it,
I’m exploring Lake Superior from the side of Minnesota.

I run on the green field,
On the white flowers,
And to the white lighthouse to jump into the blue waters
Someone yells,” He’s dead! He drowned!”, but it’s not like that,
I’m exploring Lake Superior from the side of Minnesota.

Above me is Route 61.
On it, driving, is Bob Dylan.
The waterfalls on the closest rivers sound out of tune
In the distant forests are the loathing sounds of saws
And me? I’m exploring Lake Superior from the side of Minnesota.

The palette of a regatta: who will arrive first to Duluth?
For us, cold-blooded ones, it doesn’t matter
Who’s first and who’s hundredth
I breathe like a moray- the passionate and terrifying jester
I’m exploring Lake Superior from the side of Minnesota.

A salty drop: either the moray didn’t survive in fresh water,
Or someone’s tear about me came in from the cities
The salt is there because the street is wet, the sails are still,
The first snow will cover the fields,
And we all will be living under the ice.

I won’t survive until spring; the drop of salt will eat up my body
But life in the grave is simply the soul’s process of turning dust into zygotes
The snow lies so quietly, -
I would have heard the songs of the wolves in the village of Ely
If I had been exploring Lake Superior from the side of Minnesota.

The first theatre premieres
Yellow parks and yellow tears
Rock and roll and violins
Save us from the storms
My love, keep me warm!

This is my autumn
Where the best thing is azure
Though azure is not so rare,
The road to warmth’s far away.

Champagne and a tree
Needles, foil, my daughter
With each year is growing
Older and older
From the cold enters
To culture Jesus Christ
My love, do not freeze!

This is my winter
The weather is getting colder
For jesters, nomads, and foes
And no warmth from our city goes.

A hare’s cowardness in every bush
Every leaf gives a happiness push
Every bud is electrically loaded
My love, don’t be sad!

This is my spring
Nature’s orgasm, no use healing
Torturers, hummingbirds, and doctors:
Everything flows, screams, and loves!

Resorts and beaches
Hot as scalding sugar
Come in, flying things;
I let them enter
There will be enough berries,
Not enough candles
My love, don’t grow old!

This is my summer
There’s enough light for now
Like a wasp, I believe in the sun
Until autumn I will not be done!

I will live to see the premieres and violins
And then the toys and trees,
And then, the shrubs and buds,
And then, the berries and sun,
And then, the premieres and the violins!

The smell of dying leaves.
The sky omens of the coming rain.
Staring out into this dullness fixedly,
You are walking down the park lane.
It’s always hard to believe in autumn
That the spring will ever come again
The white specks of age cover the forest floor
And the bench is cold, the bench is bare.
With the frost, stuck to bench
Are the last few withering leaves.
Remember, in the summer, they played chess here.
Mothers nursed their children in their cribs.
Afterwards, the autumn fooled us with its gold.
And, oh, how we loved that yellow gleam.
Now, everything has been killed by the cold
The comfort’s long gone. It’s disappeared.
Suddenly, you see behind the drizzle,
Somebody’s waving their handkerchief!
You walk up, and the wind simply giggles
Throwing to your feet the last dry leaf.