VLADIMIR DRUK
Vladimir Druk is one of the leading poets of the post-perestroika era in
Russian poetry. He is one of the founders of the legendary Moscow Club Poezia.
He lives currently in New York City and works as a Director of the Web Services
at the Court TV.
VITEBSK, 1914
in Memory of Marc Chagall
Fate's snotty armored train
Bursts into someone's comfort zone
Pushing their barrels through the slits
The fighters shoot and croon.
No use hiding behind the cupboard
When they've got you by the collar
Shelves fly apart
And blood trickles onto sand.
Bang! Bang! Like in ajar of lollipops
Everything rattles, everyone rattles!
And in the window's miscellany
The moon goes through its quarter phases
Its chunks and scraps
Peer through a hole in the drapes.
The weebles race down the alley
Their faces buried in Mommy's lap
And rosy milk, familiar, light,
Flows down sleepy vein like streets.
Foam flies up like a flag,
A child, or the laughter of
Tubercular violin strings.
On fire, the pregnant woman
Presses her belly to the sky,
A beautiful and bloody cab driver
Follows with a chisel.
Bed sheets and empty bottles are
Strung on the electric gun-sights,
And caught by the Italian lady
At the train station, the tiny soldier
Stands guard in long johns,
The crone chews onions for her supper,
The old man puts on a humped cap,
While the cat, deep in thought,
Ties himself into a maritime knot
But can't.
Ecstatic, the physics teacher
rubs together wires,
The school inspector's uniform
Sticks out three arms,
And the tom-off head Flies through the air,
No longer right.
From belt buckles with pencil mustaches
To thighs with languid eyes,
A whisper sweeps the classroom:
"Here comes the electric current!"
Here comes the electric current
Running through wires and tangled branches,
A magnet that will suck the twilight from
Above schoolgirls and schoolboys.
Bang! Bang! Like in a jar of lollipops Everything rattles, everyone rattles!
Oh! - what is this I see - could it be
Awkward Dora by the fence?
Thinking about this, that, and the other,
She spies the writing on the fence and
Scratches a fist with her beard.
She spies the writing on the fence and
With a gasp, bends down for a closer look at
The word "IDIOT" "SMART."
...the shack's plywood walls fall
Into tall grass with a silent shudder
When the swollen sound of an empty Harmonica slices the air.
Destiny watches me through the window,
A bloated, obese woman.
A domino tile, with a clinking sound,
Walks ceremoniously past her.
A sweaty cab driver, as if in a nightmare,
Sleeps inside a reflecting samovar.
It's dark. The night barely visible.
The moon is branded with the window's cross.
Translated from Russian by Alex Halberstadt
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