Get up at nine, go to bed at eleven
beneath the blanket's snow drift, descending within...
But before I flow away, I would like to grab
at least, some few, fine implements.

See, you don't know if you'll wake, or even when or where,
maybe here on the coverlet, or in the basement, maybe,
where putrid water oozes from the walls
where witnesses are unlikely to find you.

In a homemade hut made of bent wooden boards
or on a rough hewn bench among blighted trees,
then a sleeping bag would come in handy
and a square flashlight with a single battery.

You lay down in Russia, awoke in foreign lands
to monstrous mirages, where the grub congealed,
from which, of course, you can't run away,
but if you're holding a hacksaw, it's possible to try.

But you have to try. Fly away like a fallen leaf
Though it seems that you can only go nowhere
But if, of course, God should greet you,
It's possible, if you want, to stay there.



War comes out of raw cracks
and from oaken writing desks
She sits among objects on larder racks,
at the bottom of cooking cups, in heads pressed together,
            Her brother is a hunter who lost his whip
            And got out of bed hairy like a wild boar
            And you'll get plucked like a leaf, ripped,
            And fly to the desert where the wind wanders
Where in the forest belt's dark fog
A black mushroom scatters spores and shrivels
where Christ still sits upon a log
and won't end his talk with the Devil.



1972. School's Out

March. They greet Jesus with pussyswillow switches.
The sun, breaking through the drapes, clings to a jamb,
You dove into the metro, saw an imprint on your hand
because you had just been squeezing five copecks.
            And in the absence of God, if you suddenly should glance
            beneath your ribs, as if looking at a sheet,
            you will see a like impression, but you won't understand
            given God does not exist outside of it.
I believe in the weather report more than in Nostradamus.
All in nature makes sense. Only the properties of the hypothalamus
cause anxiety and only for scientific circles,
and the princess snores on the peas someone shoved underneath her.
            To get to the metro go over the pond, cracking in your brain
            how many meters you saved or fussed away,
            and in the freezing cold, walking hard water without faith,
            you understood that you equaled God and took to drink that day.
perceiving, from the point of view of History
that your destiny, it seems, isn't worth the ink.
But from the point of view of domesticity
the one who passed though it will judge it
            along with infusorian diagrams, singing, trigonometry,
            garages, snowdrifts, inscriptions in chalk
            and Latin at the gate. Your history
            is everything the scribe crossed out.
... Towards midday the ice chars like paper.
Snow, like burnt sugar, is stirred by a stream.
In the groceries a miracle — the frozen snapper
Comes to life in the busted icebox to dive down a drain.
            Fifteen or twenty more years till the end of the five-year plan.
            The General Secretary is silent, but lifts a brow up at a sound.
            And, having succeeded in Socialist cooperation,
            Turns water into wine, Cabernet and Bear's Blood.



Aporia

You made a bit of money;
You made a lot of money,
Anyway, it's not enough.
            You knew a few women;
            You knew a lot of women,
            Anyway, they're not enough.
You knew few prayers,
By heart—crumbs indeed.
Anyway, they're more than enough

Ekleksographia:
Wave Two

October, 2009

Poems

Larissa Shmailo translates Yuri Arabov

Larissa Shmailo has been published in Barrow Street, Fulcrum, Rattapallax, Big Bridge, Drunken Boat, Naropa's We, and many other publications. Larissa translated the Russian transrational opera Victory over the Sun by A. Kruchenych; a DVD of the original English-language production is part of the collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art and other museums. She also contributed translations to the new anthology Contemporary Russian Poetry published by Dalkey Archive Press. Her poetry CDs, The No-Net World and Exorcism are frequently heard on radio and Internet broadcasts. Her chapbook is A Cure for Suicide (Cervena Barva Press 2008). Larissa's new collection of poetry is In Paran, (BlazeVOX [books] 2009).