Arseny Tarkovsky
Field Hospital

The table they turned toward the light.
I lay head-first like meat on scales.
My soul throbbed on a thread,
I saw myself from outside:
I was balanced without make-weights
By one greasy weight from the bazaar.
That occurred
At the center of a snow shield,
Pock-marked along its western edge,
In a circle of bogs that never froze,
Of trees with broken legs,
Of railroad semi-stations
With broken scalps, all black
From snow caps that here doubled,
There tripled.
That day time stopped,
The clock didn’t work, and the souls of trains
No longer flew along the embankments,
Without lamps, on the gray fins of the steam,
And neither crows’ weddings, nor blizzards,
Nor thaws were in the limbo
Wherein I naked lay in shame
In my own blood, beyond the gravitational pull
Of the Future.
But then the shield of blinding snow
Began to move and turn upon its axis
In a circle, and just above my head
The squadron of seven planes turned back,
And on my body a bandage became hard as bark,
And a stranger’s blood dripped
Into my veins from a retort,
And I was breathing like a fish on sand,
And swallowing the air, hard, mica, earthy,
Cold and blessed.

My lips were cracked, and also
I was given to drink from a spoon, and also
I was unable to recall my name,
But on my tongue
King David’s lexicon revived.
And then
The snow melted, early spring
Rose on her toes and enveloped
The trees within her green kerchief.

Translated by Sofiya Yuzefpolskaya-Tsilosani and George Rueckert