Andrei Voznesensky
The Nose

The nose grows during the whole of one’s life
(from scientific sources)

Yesterday my doctor told me:
“Clever you may be, however
Your snout is frozen.”
So don’t go out in the cold,
Nose!

On me, on you, on Capuchin monks,
According to well-known medical laws
Relentless as clocks, without pause
Nose-trunks triumphantly grow.

During the night they grow
On every citizen, high or low,
on janitors, ministers, rich and poor,
Hooting endlessly like owls,
Chilly and out of kilter,
Brutally bashed by a boxer
Or foully crushed by a door,
And those of our feminine neighbors
Are foxily screwed like drills
Into many a keyhole.

Gogol, that mystical uneasy soul,
Intuitively sensed their role.

My good friend Buggins got drunk: in his dream
It seemed that, like a church spire
Breaking through washbowls and chandeliers,
Piercing and waking startled ceilings,
Impaling each floor like,
Receipts on a spike,

Higher and higher
rose
his nose.

“What could that mean?” he wondered next morning.
“A warning,” I said, “of doomsday: it looks
As if they were going to check your books.”
On the 30th poor Buggins was haled off to jail.

Why, O Prime Mover of Noses, why
Do our noses grow longer, our lives shorter,
why during the night should these fleshly lumps,
like vampires or suction pumps,
Drain us dry?

They report that Eskimos,
Kiss with their nose.

Among us this has not caught on.

Translated by W. H. Auden