Galina Ermoshina
translated from the Russian by Gerald J. Janecek
* * *
And also the Minotaur, farmer, owner, respondent,
on the sleepless page he is the same age, a petitioner and a weaver.
To the dedicated he is light, to the detained‹reaping and stoves
in the last Tauride, where the ship's acrobat still lives.
And a marked sign is a lodger and a stepchild of the word,
right when a floorboard creaks -- the first step or gesture.
This is an ovary and a backwater, returned, left again,
his best tower -- for foam, for veins, for a cross.
And it depicts as melted -- thinner than the cracks in a ledge,
the cursed lightness and audacity of fragile chimney swifts.
But the writing pads and grains are a doggedly learned list
on window conciseness and the stinginess of pass-through declensions.
***
Autumn your bellringing, the apple of bright weeping.
It does not hurt‹the boatman, pendulum and carousel.
If you had been here‹all would have been decided differently,
but who can search for you on the gypsum bottom, Odysseus.
Or follow the traces left of the black road,
only an end of yarn will knit consent into speech.
Let Penelope wait‹thus spoke the gods,
and a circle of milk in a bowl, and the oven of a potter's wheel.
If the cup is glued too, and the halves fit together
of an apple, of damp earth, of a page read,
and the trace of yesterday's snow, and the ice of Christmas clay,
then all the same the shore and a seashell of sand will remain.
***
I do not know, is it I, O Lord,
caught by my clothes on the light,
and in the burned out dream sheets shine white
and the right answer is proposed.
I shall remain a the black mark,
a wicked aspen, the crack of a leaf,
a worm-hole, melted copper,
a rusty wound in the cold of canvas,
and a word, which scratches the throat,
the darkness in stone eyes,
and a silence falls again
on him, who said “Be glad!"
***
As from dryness of palate the word “illness” is born,
So from the dryness of light a waiting for sky will come,
And a support will be found and a stone and a bitterness and a tin –
Unchangeable flattery of a bell-like rye bread.
Even if water is leaving through dark granite,
ice is breaking by the promise of learned measure,
and when the ice-covered ground of an invariable bottom shows,
turncoat-night will prepare the fate and the faith.
And it’s arise familiarly in the unconcern of a white line
as this split-off day, as a prickly scent of iodine and pine
Christmas will ring out and in the doorway of the January water
will stop the rustling of bandages and carbolic acids with conversation.
And the cup is dropped in the awkward sound of wine,
is it honey or copper or the traces of warped boards.
The rough draft of a late, fragile dream will still be alive
when the air of the Second Coming gushes in my veins.
* * *
Is this the breathing of a stone or a dropped light
from the dream of which you went away to Nazareth?
Where breaks a gypsum stick from one pair of eyes to another
an alabaster white sequence sharpened to cracking
or restful paint which was sawed from wounds
a temple arising nearer the sky and noon
and a red silent cloak becomes dark like a crust
deeper then greek bowls and it approaches the throat
__________
Galina Ermoshina was born in the Saratov region of Russia in 1962. Now she lives in Samara and works in a library. Her books of poems and prose poems include: Windows of Rain (1990), Time Town (1994), Circles of Speech (2005), Call of Non-happen time (2007), Sand Clock (2013) and her other publications include more than 150 articles and book reviews on contemporary Russian literature.
Gerald Janecek (PhD 1971, Univ. of Michigan); Professor emeritus of Russian at the Univ. of Kentucky. Author of books and translations of works by Andrei Bely, the Russian Futurists and various contemporary Russian poets. Current research focuses on contemporary Russian poetry, esp. Moscow Conceptualism.
translated from the Russian by Gerald J. Janecek
* * *
And also the Minotaur, farmer, owner, respondent,
on the sleepless page he is the same age, a petitioner and a weaver.
To the dedicated he is light, to the detained‹reaping and stoves
in the last Tauride, where the ship's acrobat still lives.
And a marked sign is a lodger and a stepchild of the word,
right when a floorboard creaks -- the first step or gesture.
This is an ovary and a backwater, returned, left again,
his best tower -- for foam, for veins, for a cross.
And it depicts as melted -- thinner than the cracks in a ledge,
the cursed lightness and audacity of fragile chimney swifts.
But the writing pads and grains are a doggedly learned list
on window conciseness and the stinginess of pass-through declensions.
***
Autumn your bellringing, the apple of bright weeping.
It does not hurt‹the boatman, pendulum and carousel.
If you had been here‹all would have been decided differently,
but who can search for you on the gypsum bottom, Odysseus.
Or follow the traces left of the black road,
only an end of yarn will knit consent into speech.
Let Penelope wait‹thus spoke the gods,
and a circle of milk in a bowl, and the oven of a potter's wheel.
If the cup is glued too, and the halves fit together
of an apple, of damp earth, of a page read,
and the trace of yesterday's snow, and the ice of Christmas clay,
then all the same the shore and a seashell of sand will remain.
***
I do not know, is it I, O Lord,
caught by my clothes on the light,
and in the burned out dream sheets shine white
and the right answer is proposed.
I shall remain a the black mark,
a wicked aspen, the crack of a leaf,
a worm-hole, melted copper,
a rusty wound in the cold of canvas,
and a word, which scratches the throat,
the darkness in stone eyes,
and a silence falls again
on him, who said “Be glad!"
***
As from dryness of palate the word “illness” is born,
So from the dryness of light a waiting for sky will come,
And a support will be found and a stone and a bitterness and a tin –
Unchangeable flattery of a bell-like rye bread.
Even if water is leaving through dark granite,
ice is breaking by the promise of learned measure,
and when the ice-covered ground of an invariable bottom shows,
turncoat-night will prepare the fate and the faith.
And it’s arise familiarly in the unconcern of a white line
as this split-off day, as a prickly scent of iodine and pine
Christmas will ring out and in the doorway of the January water
will stop the rustling of bandages and carbolic acids with conversation.
And the cup is dropped in the awkward sound of wine,
is it honey or copper or the traces of warped boards.
The rough draft of a late, fragile dream will still be alive
when the air of the Second Coming gushes in my veins.
* * *
Is this the breathing of a stone or a dropped light
from the dream of which you went away to Nazareth?
Where breaks a gypsum stick from one pair of eyes to another
an alabaster white sequence sharpened to cracking
or restful paint which was sawed from wounds
a temple arising nearer the sky and noon
and a red silent cloak becomes dark like a crust
deeper then greek bowls and it approaches the throat
__________
Galina Ermoshina was born in the Saratov region of Russia in 1962. Now she lives in Samara and works in a library. Her books of poems and prose poems include: Windows of Rain (1990), Time Town (1994), Circles of Speech (2005), Call of Non-happen time (2007), Sand Clock (2013) and her other publications include more than 150 articles and book reviews on contemporary Russian literature.
Gerald Janecek (PhD 1971, Univ. of Michigan); Professor emeritus of Russian at the Univ. of Kentucky. Author of books and translations of works by Andrei Bely, the Russian Futurists and various contemporary Russian poets. Current research focuses on contemporary Russian poetry, esp. Moscow Conceptualism.