untitled translation of Sergei Gandlevsky

Когда я жил на этом свете
И этим воздухом дышал,
И совершал поступки эти,
Другие, нет, не совершал;
Когда помалкивал и вякал,
Мотал и запасался впрок,
Храбрился, зубоскалил, плакал -
И ничего не уберег;
И вот теперь, когда я умер
И превратился в вещество,
Никто - ни Кьеркегор, ни Бубер -
Не объяснит мне, для чего,
С какой - не растолкуют - стати,
И то сказать, с какой-такой
Я жил и в собственной кровати
Садился вдруг во тьме ночной...


When I lived in this world
And breathed this air,
I've done some things,
Not others, no, I haven't;
I held my tongue and whined,
Squandered as well as saved some,
Tried to be brave, I scoffed, I cried
Yet salvaged nothing;
And now that I am dead,
Into matter transformed,
Not Kierkegaard or Buber, no one
Can explain to me why,
What - they won't tell me – for,
It seems too easy to ask why
I lived, and why I'd sit up in my bed
Suddenly awoken in the gloom of night…

Sergei Gandlevsky - 1995

Translated by - Olia Grebenyuk (now Hercules)

Drinking Lament

Drink this up, before you leave me
Consider what I have said.

Be careful on your way
Drink and be merry whilst you can,
Pay no mind to those left behind
Do not be pushed off course.

Drink this up, before the ship sets sail
I'll tie knots in this kerchief
Thinking of your hair in the wind.

Drink and fall around if you must
Just remember what I said,
Cut deep salt wounds.

Drink, Drink to your heart's content
I'll still be waiting by the window
Too far from the harbour to catch a glimpse.

Drink the sea spray Drink the wind
Think no more of me beyond
What I asked you to remember, but
Drink will make you forget
Of this I am sure
My request rendered pointless, but I knew.

Drink in the view
As the bow dips violently – sway, crash
Unseen rocks are approaching, still
Drink over ice, the cracks and splinters
I'll wait by the window for word
Whilst your hair tangles with seaweed, barnacles on bones.

Drink this up, before you leave me.

Alexis Hercules

untitled translation of Boris Rizhy

I shall leave for some remote Northern city,
Squatting, I will smoke a roll-up,
I'll be pricked  by a dear friend accidentally,
He will sob over me when he sobers.

I know one cheerless place in medieval Rus,
Where cheerful people live for the day,
To stay there is scary, to leave is to lose honour,
To  gulp spirits - for soul; and to pray - into darkness.

What rivers are located in taiga,
What vastness unfolds in the morning,
Local women roam them and fugitive lifers
Are raising horizons into the third power.

Let me go, you. I'm alive only barely,
I'm nobody's forever, a Judas, a psychopath,
I am not in deep sorrow, but the gloomy, dark fir trees
Promise a certain deep sorrow ahead.


Boris Rizhy (1974-2001)

Translated by Olia Grebenyuk (now Hercules)

spare me

the vanity of those who seek to end history
by scorning the claims of the ghost story.

We who live by mystery
have no business trespassing
on the last myths
     of the blue universe.

Take the late mist of a dying princess:

the torrid blush, the fluttered lash
    the camera flash
the visual challenge
    of the smoky glass;

the broken heart's commodity.

The wounded driver a flame
    in the eyes
of an astonished girl.

(field of landmines   tiny legs   a mirage on distant sands)

We who live by mystery wait.
‘I's cast open, eyes half closed
while the lights smoke in the tunnel
    and the car's a wreck
the heart a brain
           the palace shattered glass,

beauty shy of time.
                   
  *

In this particular kingdom of the blind
the one eyed man is too busy
      shepherding to brace the reins
            of a king,

warding off the accidents of human traffic,
the stumbling patsies of misplaced trust,
another lusty collusion of genocide and fun.

           Yet a mile high above
  in the flight paths of the blind
a stewardess advises her passengers
            thus:

‘At the command: brace! place your head
between your legs and
       pray - or trust at least

for the plane is losing
        altitude fast     
               &
we all may be obliged to acknowledge soon the moment
     in which
even the Beautiful People
     won't be leaving
 good-looking corpses

But in the locker above your head
you will find confirmation that

even the visually challenged
     will have every right
to have seen and not seen the fire at the end of the universe
       which the scriptures say
will burn seven times hotter
        than the sun.’

Ade Jackson

gate

[ 1. ]

   funny furnishings         0           exposure
   he would see             1  to all in the mind
      heaven                2  
 as funny                   3          makes way
 dreamy furniture           4             to all
wavey lines                 5
   moved it around          6            and all
       a bit                7                 or

[ 2.] (accompaniment to 1.?)

  All the nonsense in the    0               or all
world greater                 the gummy branches
than all the nonsense       2        the body done
the world                                   in
      milked                          added on
him or his                             a thing
  bed                                   his body
  place                     7          peripheries

[ 3.] (solo)

     a mass                  0         a path
  of fuzzy problems                bodily
                              taken
                            3
  twin lip                      two
  tautly they
                            6
                         #.(one added      on

[ 4.]

      heaven by high                    infinite
    road                           dusty elements
   the magic                      about the head
            car                  of the driver
  in the elements           4  
  the magic car             5     by hook
        how far ?           6       or crook the
- the distance               7             long drive

[ 5.]

    lock in a system                the bed as it
       all loved things           appears in a dream
                           expansive, joined on
     place the bed as it                   all sides
     appears in                            by a bed
    commotion under         5          impinges on
    something                                 
    fed on loves                                   

[ 6.] (all at once)

away from a hallowed gate,    0       light, that
 away again bigger                        funny thing?
 away from the gate or                                 fun
       shocked to pieces -   3               to the end
light passes on the                             lightened up
real world                                    a mist, beauty
tulip, mildew, and            6      of a day after mist
all light passing through                         the ending

[ 7.] (reiterate)

 shut in the brain and step   0   here was heaven at the first
out, stop, down                     step - We thought about it
it ends in rooms,I            .   and there was a car journey -
put rooms here                    We ended that wondering is
only running out by my           that anyway to go and thought
own design, enclosures        .   a heaven would answer "Love"
here,hear "bark" things          or a means, - means of "going
hungry to clean up            .  or  any way,where         on"

M Pendleton