The Evening

It was evening Silence went on rusting its drying
skin upon my face.
There I stood so greedy to catch the instants
The ones slipping between my fingers
As they where glimpsing, dashing, disappearing...
And it scared me when that game turned out childish,
I wish I could have banished fear outside,
I shouted
My throat erupted down a nestling, wet and soggy,
And so awkwardly and ugly it fluttered, so it quivered.
But gradually power and freedom came out of the silence,
And then it flew in all directions,
And it bumped in its haste into the foreheads
of brainless houses,
Falling down and jumping again and standing rigid...
It gave houses a real start,
They yawned so slowly and swallowed down the rattling echo,
And started mooing so plaintively and sadly.
And boredom whirled like drying autumn-leaves,
Flying over the caps of the roofs,
And so it strove towards where black and dismal
flocks of rainouts condensed,
Where once a tired and rather reddened eye was blinking.
I saw the Heaven flow away heavily,
There was nothing to come by that time.
I just bid the last day farewell,
Someone touched me so tenderly,
Poor clothes on him, beside me
A cancelled idea was freezing from chill,
So I whispered it to come,
And a lump of my joy growing inside me
and making me feel it,
I caressed it and clasped to my breast,
Night was turning and tossing there on our way,
But we were going to meet it,
And the first day was born behind it

Music

There are little bubbles of tunes born by perfect secrets,
So they roll in green emotions, they flow in waves of amour,
And it's above where they strive,
Where all is so clear and unruffled, so light and joyous...
There's a thinnest film wrapped around the surface,
around the bubbles of tunes,
Suddenly it snaps and leaves a jingle to echo back.
Thousands of those bubbles, of those bells are liberating music.
It doesn't die down.
So light are the splinters of ringing spray
that they ascend above the world.
That high within the sky they look so much like a cloud,
A white irreproachably pure one,
The one that the wind makes huddle behind the horizon,
And later that cloud turns into something different than ever,
And drops are falling down, falling down.
The fragments of beauteous balls.
Now listen once again. The waves of sounds are shining from nowhere.
It looks like a tinkling rain has dropped on the generous Earth.
And down where it touched it now some bells have grown.
A crystal surge flows over the plain,
Its tenderness hurts, its softness hurts.

A MUSICIAN

Imagine...
An old musician playing here.
A vagabond
But not a fool.
Imagine also this...
The shabby instrument he's holding tight-
Old Lady Fiddle
Decades of years wiser than a man.
And also please...
A candle's burning eye.
A tavern.
Night.
Some drunkards hoarsely crying.
A stray cat's game.
A deep soul pain.
Hey, yawning, are you?
Look here, I bet you would enjoy.
No tavern - just the fleeting world.
No night - goddamn melancholy.
No candle burning - this is hope.
No vagabond, no poor musician there -
The choice of Heaven, of the spacious land.
No fiddle in his hands - the virgin dawn,
So light it is, it's just like breathing of a child,
And yet not a string to break the dark -
The thread of sun, the death of night.

* * *

Maiden, where are you,
Who is tearing leaves off the branch,
I was seeking you in a grove,
Believing
And fancying pictures drinking wine,
The liqueur prepared from petals,
Your eyes so shy,
Your hair upon the wind,
In dreams you were calling me.
I stood right there
Like morrow before the sunrise,
And a hermit I was,
Sad meditations to dress me.
The final Moon is very soon to rise,
And though I'll have to sleep,
But it's the celebration
Of my memory,
For the billows of any silver brook
Always carry the scarlet petals
you have torn off.

* * *

The boredom of my dreams.
I was standing before my looking-glass,
Revealing, diluting my glance,
My ideas to hit each other.
So
The billiards balls
By the evening nothingness
Are breaking down the sticking plaster of sounds.
So, my alarm-clock
Gauntly, grimly, like a sphinx,
Got to swallow and to scratch the skin of feelings.
There’s a limit in a pause.
Here're the midges of the highlights
Dashing up, and sun heat burning snows,
That is our past revolting
That is breathing of our sleeping dream.

* * *

Yawning into the over glued morrow,
I am pouring from a hoarse kitchen-faucet.
And always I marvel -
The Earthly womb is waiting for me.
And then I can talk and laugh,
Moving bloodily pencils of thoughts.
That is shuffle of my steps in the worldly gullet.
That is like I play a game,
Thinking for my breath's behalf.
Going up the stairs crumbling and shabby
Where throngs were stepping
Aluminum teeth - i hear them clank at the kitchen,
And nothingness gobbling up every day,
No matter I wipe from my face
The saliva of business,
I'm still being born...

* * *

My spirit doesn't grow inside the sheathing of
the human body.
Mirrors offer that disguise.
I am a tree with the sap of life to drink,
Roots have penetrated where
The wind some day had brought the original grain.
The motion is only directed up.
From the terrestrial blackness towards the Heaven’s azure,
And agitations are the branches it is stretching.
And stupid hesitations are the rustle of the leaves.
The wind, the one that's coming from nowhere
and going to nowhere,
Deprives them of their lands.
And so desperate and silent
Stranded leaves are hovering far in the valley.
And then within a by-gone by-street
Time is brooming away all dried and yellowed leaves,
Losing their rustle, losing their flutter,
And only those ones involved in other's branches
Are calling to join them perturbed.
And I hear them all call for help !

A VESSEL

A dark black dome above the motionless and silent ocean,
And specks of stars.
And the Moon is a most lonesome lantern.
And the world so transparent, a big lump of glass,
Fantastic castles have been put into by a famous craftsman,
And hanging their reflections are looking like stalactites.
There's nothing breaking into the quietness.
There's only silence looking dark in threads of cracks.
But then in the water mirror convulsions start running.
Oh so slow.
Slowly the shadow of a colossal bird is moving.
And here’s the vessel heaving, nearly pellucid and light.
No ghost and no dream.
No sail the ship must have,
There are columns towering instead, and spirals
of archways and stairways.
And also bells.
Hear them scarcely ring
And fall like crystals down on ice.
And then that careful ringing echoes in the world,
It's shimmering, vibrating, slightly droning.
And such marvelous music'.
But there's only one person ever to listen.
The keeper of the bells, he’s yonder, on the board.
And he's going up the staircase.
His heavy raincoat pouring down the stairs behind him.
And still you're gonna hear those measured steps,
And still you're gonna hear that charming chime,
And still you're gonna see the troubled wave.

The Gamblers

Here are the gamblers.
Table.
Hands.
They broke their fingers shadows,
The corns of squeaking
The tangled cases of the play,
The ones who spread their beads of patience
all over wooden boards,
The one
Who weave their karma's patterns from now on.
The ones
Who just fun and raptures still keep living.
It's time fore us to shudder in our dreams,
It's time to strive
To where the rustle's swelling,
And not to lose with yawns
To weave yourself inside,
Unweaving at the same time.

* * *

A lonesome prisoner of forest,
A summer nightingale
Has swallowed all the blood of flowing sunset,
All expectation of the Earth,
The wariness of the young and virgin fog
And burdens of the future night.
Intoxicated by the hops of colors and desires,
It started crying with his absurd emotions.
He turned into a solemn echo,
He wandered in the grove of clouds,
He ruffled silence and calmed down
Just like a splinter
Of strange and boring dreams.

* * *

Tenderness-
A May Flower
So shaky on its thin stalk,
Don't tear it off, don't tear away.
It dries apart from here.
You better kneel before it
Down' like to an icon.
You better touch it
With your warmness.
And petals,
Just like wings of dragon-flies,
You better stretch out slightly.
And it will quiver,
It will call
And rush up
And not to leave the Earth below
But to attract it higher.

* * *

I'll go into a minute pure like snow,
And light like shiver of eye-lashes.
I'll Look,
My lips will touch
The silence of the sleeping eyes.
There'll be a door to open
Where some expect ion concentrates beside my window
Where awful fissures will expose their grins.
But I'll get bask,
My ways will interflow.
We'll have no walls,
We'll link our hands...
You hear me!
I'll get back.

* * *

The cloth of time tore apart.
The snap was unexpected.
And stunned and stupefied I stood rigid,
Hearing a second unburdened
Squeezed by the vice of different times.
And a groan is bulking up to silence
Though it struggled thru the fence of teeth.
It is a real touch of hair
That I suppose can hardly ever cease.
And through your steps are gone,
And the gait of Chronos has changed,
No thread - a clew again.
No beginning and no end in it at all,
But though no matter - I aspire to you
Within my frozen instant.

A Horseman

Clatter on the road.
A horseman,
Sheathed
Into rigid armor,
Has hidden his stubborn glance.
Clatter on the road -
That's how sounds the future
Penetrating into the past,
And calmly.
Insistently
It's counting the winkles on the palm
Let this sounding never end !

* * *

Tonight we have a Bacchanal of fire.
A war of love and malice,
A fight of whispering and crying
I know there's nothing funnier
And angrier for me.
There are no soldiers killed in action,
And from the ruined gate
Like ashes of burning messages.
There are souls silently floating
There are stalks of love still struggling
Thru the layer deceased,
But they burn out and fall down
Deprived of their light and blood.
And the Earth suddenly fearfully shudders,
Like a body forgetting its breath.
And then it's rising, shaking its ashes,
Hiding from delicate Heaven,
Rusty and severe and brutal fields.

* * *

The minute twilight Heaven
Is gobbling up itself
And giving birth to itself.
The minute feral minutes
Are worrying in a circle's dungeon
And rattling with their chains in fear.
The minute when your back bends down
Under the problems burden
And shadows strangle whispering,
Don't be afraid and tear
The torture knitted by depression
And wait, I beg you, wait a bit -
Your lips will touch the paradise of morning.

* * *

I had a dream
And you were not within it,
There was a grayish wall,
And just the one.
The one so blind, the one so dumb,
And deaf as cotton,
And blind as thousands of blind men.
And even darkness was not there.
That could have had your shadow's glimpse.
There was a wall and I was standing by its side
You'll never know how bad I felt,
But though I ruined it...
And there's no wall.

* * *

Spirit's thread in a vice,
The voice is so weak
With crunch of jaws of doubts and problems,
And quivering I hear,
Sometimes so slight,
Brief like a careless ah,
Then more acute, close to squeaking,
Sometimes a blow and another,
Just like breakers of foam.
Or the crashing is dying down again,
For the lonely word, "stop" to be heard more distinctly.
What do thoughts have to do,
Weave a merciless loop Or divide into feelings
And dissolve in inebriate violence
Melting over a drop like an ice-flee.

* * *

Well, has it
Really fluttered?
So long
And so thinly
A hair of crystal is buzzing.
And what's my rough rest scared by?
Perhaps something different,
The thing I cannot squeeze by my thoughts,
Or these are sounds of silence?
But here is a rush,
A painful squeak of two splinters,
A sob choked by teeth straightaway,
Commotion of wrinkles
In the lips of ironical flesh -
And quietness again.
No motion of shiver.
And talking again,
No glitter of doubts.

* * *

Beneath
The soil of eyes
A pit of spirit
And there are some reflections swirling,
And there are thirst and rest
Shimmering in vaults.
A troubled butter-fly
Within a lilac fire
Is crucified by dark and joy,
And dancing in raincoats above
There are some melancholic pigmies.
But you wake up,
Don't listen to their groaning.
Because the fire flower
Can trample down the dark.

* * *

Where's my voice,
Really where?
Inside a crumpled paper sheet
Or in the spike
That tore apart the milkiness of nothingness
by a stroke,
Or in an autumn day
Amid the dried up meditations,
Or in a looking-glass
Between myself and round dances of reflections?
How could it break away,
That silently,
To you?

Obstacles

Obstacles are the doors that are closed
And that you can never open,
And that is why you should go straight thru them.

Obstacles are the doors that are opened.
That's where's the trouble.
There's nothing that hard and that painful
As entering an opened door.

Your will wont help there,
Neither will a flow carry you in.
But will and flow are not the opposite states,
It is a unity
That carries you thru all the obstacles.

Obstacles are mystery.
And you should really forget the unraveled mystery.
For there's no life for you within it.

* * *

You're not by my side
But somewhere...
While around there's thinness of twining cloth.
And how silent is the flying flow!
Tenderness touching your face,
Your lips and lashes.
Your tenderness...
This is white down.
Extremely white.
And when I close my eyes
I sink in it.
But still there's a trouble
To fall on the floor
Like a chilly knife.

* * *

Me!
I cried aloud,
And listened to thousand voices
Of ostentatious echo murmur.
But why...
You...
Who also possesses a "me".
And now it's a long
Or probably a short time
That there's no one like you
And there's no one like me -
We lost ourselves in search for each other.
And even birds are motionless
When listening to our breathing.

* * *

I've lapped enough of tiredness,
I cancelled all I swore,
Became as drunk and lazy
As my shame forbade before.
And graciously kneeling
I was imploring lovely cupid
Just to set me on my feet
When I’m losing my religion.
But he was napping in the hugs of grief
Around him and over me,
There was a flock of night-black owls
To blind my eyes with drowsy down...
But suddenly under the vault
Of stuffiness a patch of light
Appeared - a breath of love caprice,
A portent of some brand-new birth,
It gave a start to God,
It gave a rise to me,
A brand-new way to go.

* * *

The frost of years
Is crunching in my lips
Like crystals of my wrinkles.
Some term is meant,
It's meant for you,
It's meant for me.
There'll come an hour, a minute,
The hiway snake
Will sting its own body,
Each one to shudder,
To look back,
Lean over backwards.
The face will met in a looking-glass,
What will be left of it?
A question, Earthly vagabond,
That still keeps calling like a prayer
In bowels of its eyes.
It’s shuddering, it's flowing,
It is an echo
Of the ones who squeezed out whisper
Into the man's nowhere,
The ones who mad
A walk along the crucified avenues,
Who wrapped their hearts
From rattle and from chill,
Who didn't stop to heat the faith-bird.

* * *

It's snowing outside.
Silence so whitely hovers in me.
I'm climbing up towards the pure,
I'm stepping at the hovering.
And your touch is extremely infinite.
It is lasting and lasting,
And the motion is closed
In the round of our closeness.

* * *

I love you.
Why the hell announce?
It's only anguish,
No expression.
I'm only
Saying it
So soft
That you should feel the real passion.

* * *

A stroke of evening,
Dividing the face,
The line is quivering
Between light and shadow,
Between the happened and the desired.
Your breath is stock-still
Within my lips...
It slid down, it dissolved,
It got back to the past.

* * *

Like fish is dashing
In invisible threads,
That’s how I dashed
Breaking off the gives,
Ousting the cramp of meditations,
Into the arm our of amour,
Like into netting.
But wishing freedom
Was only giving birth to slavery,
And every time I tore you off
We interflowed again.

* * *

I'm in the jam of thoughts,
I'm stumbling over the ledge of feeling,
I’m falling onto hard days...
No matter - I'm up,
I'm shaking unproper egg-shell down,
Here I go again,
Chivied by the ghosts of hopes.

The Secret Vespers

The shadows
Bent above my desk.
I saw their faces stolid, sad,
A ground was matting down so long
And knit the outlines with white thread.
But there forecasting light and sun,
A candle ray was silently praying,
And there the gray world carried down
Was doomed to bear the darkness pain.

* * *

In a cluttered up room, in the corner,
Near the black dent of his shade,
Here's a man.
He's listening to the rustle of awoken emotions
And Their in faint squeak.
And the expectation,
Just like a shivering dove,
Flew into the abandoned apartment,
With a pile of lockers and bookcases.
The wings are quivering,
Blowing out the dusty veil,
Breaking down the mould of silence.
Writhing and standing stocks till,
Irritated calm
Is creeping its lusty bodies.
The man is silent,
He bites his lips,
He’s smiling
Looking at the broken window.

We

We're the worlds
Locked up in body shells,
Each one collapsed into appoint
Subjected to the chance of a movement.
Each one is a contradiction,
A collision of two beginnings
But each one is a gist of the infiniteness.
Life is close to the Brownian movement.
Flung by an invisible hand
We're flying in a cram of pain and discord.
We're walking alone,
Not able to touch
The real essence of each other's,
Muffling in rugs of emotions and meditations.
Just slightly it dawns upon the world
Bask from the locked up frozen souls.
Just pain and loneliness
Help feel the moments of happiness and love.
And just like unexpectedly, by chance,
When there're wind and dark around
And no exit at all,
A glowing butterfly flies plump into the soul.

* * *

It's the Leningrad late May night -
It's the season of shadows and phantoms,
It's the season of horsemen in cocked hats,
And golden royal carriages.
It's a real fairy season.
When magic shimmer of my dreams
Is breaking thru the curtained window
To meet the dreams of the lonely strangers,
In the whitish midnight the Fontanka water
Is becoming viscid butter.
I saw so often
The humpbacked nobilities houses
Sprawl down at the stone pavements.
And sink their thin snake - like feet
Into some twilight liquid
And slightly trouble its dense skin.