Nikolay Zabolotsky
The loop canal

Our my window, the loop canal
Holds the neighborhood in thrall.

Teamsters, having snared their horses
In coppet-plated harnesses,
Stroll in their jackets like padishahs,
With the low-life’s preposterous lordliness.
All around the taverns stand;
The teamsters arc sitting in taverns,
The assembled horses' faces stare
Minutely through the windows there.
And there, past where the faces linger,
For a quarter mile the crowd spills forth:
The blind men stretching out their fingers
Like steel rods, crying out in chorus.
A vendor, clapping, throws a pair
Of trousers upward in the air —
A screaming falcon: he is lord
Of trousers, the movements of planets and crowds
Arc his; the twirl of pants commands
The crowd suspended: There it stands,
Its pride forgotten, quite unable
To turn from such a miracle,
Ecstatic in exhaustion.

Shriek and whistle like a stooge.
Vendor, Hing them to the sky!
But before this packed human deluge
Another current passes by:
One man lifts a boot on a tray,
Another one praises his poodle for sale,
A third, a fearsome, ruddy man,
Beats a saucepan with his hands.
And there is no resistance now:
The crowd is wrapped up and subdued,
Moving like a sleepwalker,
Its hands stretched out before it.

And the dark factories stand like castles
Around us, and the sound of hawking
Is in the sky; again on the columns
Of their splendid legs the mustangs arc walking.
The carts moan sadly through it all,
The furrowed mud is thrown about,
The cripples sleep by the canal,
Lying down on empty bottles.

Translated by Denis Johnson and Kathy Lewis