Eduard Bagritsky
TVS

Dust fills the nostrils — the horses neigh.
Acacias molt over the firewood stacks.
In the wind the red hemp is asway.
The sun stands in the middle of the backyard,
The lunch-break arrives, having gnawed
its way through the growling soot of the day.

I'm home, til dusk. All is quiet.
The sun's aboil in every flint.
But bluntly, from the deep, from the heart
The Caugh's foreboding is coming to me.

The world is prickly and naked again:
Stones — angles, and houses — are angles;
The grass is so green that its aftertaste is caustic.
The roads are white to the point of screeching.
Improbably prodding each other along
Sprouts and Celcius shoot for the sun.

This means that the mucus in the larynx has dried,
That the air is well-fried and it's sinking down,
And in a low rumble from beneath,
Along the vines, rises the tubercular mould.

The earth is getting hoarse from the heat.
The thermometer explodes. And onto me
Thunderously collapse other worlds
In cascades of mercurial flames.
They burn me, they seep into my lips.
And the road too flows like mercury.
In the evening I'm off to the reporter's club,
For a lecture and a movie,
A get-together of the reporter's workshop.
At home it's all drowsy and dusky:
Such is the milk's modest testament.

The same old emasculated view in the windows,
The same feline and infantile world
That crawls through the veins and chokes them,
It is dear to me to the point of disgust,
Its soot fills the nostrils, the mouth,
Larinx and lungs — all are full,
It calls to attention with a
Fryingpans' hissing voice, to remind:
Sleep more, while the world is still orderly. Sleep, sonny-boy."

The hand grows heavy and cold,
The sinew beats in the temple.

This means the following: the lungs
Suck the air drop by drop, in tandem;
This means the following: the fabric rusts;
This means the following: chills, stifling heat.

The sinew beats in the temple.
Contracts behind the eyelids
As if it were a finger, sharply pointed,
Knocking ever so slightly at the door.
I must rise to unlock it!

Enter! — And so he does:
Sharply angular face,
Goatee sharply angled.
He steps off the wall, out of the mass
Of inflamed banners, or does he?
Goatee forward, the eye squinting
Caustically from under the visor.
I say — "are you here for me,
Felix? I am unwell."

The sun descends along the wall
To give supper to the gutter cats.
The sunset is suffused with boiled fruit.
The famous silence covers all.
And over the wooden out-house
The Moon comes out in its full uncouthness.

He says — "Just came for a chat."
And sits down on the side of my bed.

He seems to continue an old argument,
Says: "The yard under the windows
Is full of prickly cats and dead grass,
Can't tell which century is on.
But the century lies in wait on the pavement,
Sharp-focused like a sentry.
Go, — and fear not to stand near him.
Yours and century's solitudes are the same.
Look around — enemy everywhere.
Offer your hand — no friend in sight;
If the century says "Lie!", then you lie.
If the century says "Kill!", then you kill.
I have also felt the heavy load
Of the hand on my shoulder, and the coarseness
Of soldierly-cut wisker on my cheek.
The table was open wide, just like the country,
The tablecloth was smeared in blood, in ink,
In the rust of pen-nibs, strewn with papershards —
All this stood guard over friend and enemy.
So when the enemy came — he would sit in the same chair,
Sit and then collapse into oblivion.
The dirt sucked out his gentle bones,
And moats closed over them.
The signature on the warrant slithered
like blood streaming from a bullet-hole in the temple.
Revolution, Mother! It is no small weight —
the three-sided sincerity of the bayonet;
It rears out of bloody dregs,
the aged workings of the soil.
Steam-roll it. Hit it with a song.
Egg it on with a shovel, prick with a hoe!
It rears over your head —
take it up on a pitchfork and tip it over.
Let your fate be esteemed;
Die — in victory, the way I died."
Silence. The sinew in the temple
Is calmer and beats more cautiously.
This means that the sweat is slowly
And coldly seeps from the pores.
The wind is in my face, thick like water out of a bucket,
Like the messenger of Victory, like snow, like chill.
The leicocyte of the Moon hangs over the round backyard.
The stars are round, and so are the bushes.
Entire nine hours are poured off into the barrel by the window.
I exit. The bolt shuffles behind my back
And locks. Silence again.
The Earth floats out of the darkness,
It has the texture of a raw plank
Ready for the saw's light dance and
The hammer's heavy gait.
And I exit (the darkness around me)
To the reporter's club, for a lecture and a movie,
A gettogether of the reporter's workshop.

Translated by Roman Turovsky-Savchuk