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