Wednesday, August 16, 2017

POLINA BARSKOVA ~






Manuscript Found by Natasha Rostova
During the Fire of Moscow




I will try to live on earth without you.



I will try to live on earth without you.



I will become any object,

I don't care what —



I will be this speeding train.

This smoke

Or a beautiful gay man laughing in the front seat.



The human body is without defense.



It's a piece of firewood.

Ocean water hits it.

Lenin puts it on his official shoulder.



And therefore, in order not to suffer, a human spirit

Lives

Inside the water and inside the wood and inside

     the shoulder of a great dictator.



But I will not be water. I will not be a fire.

I will be an eyelash.

A sponge washing the hairs of your neck;

Or a verb, an adjective

I will become. Such a word



Slightly lights your forehead.

What happened? Nothing.

Something visited? Nothing.



What was there you cannot whisper.

No smoke without fire, they whisper.

I will be a handful of smoke

Over this, lost, Moscow.



I will console any man,

I will sleep with any man,

Beneath the army's traveling horse carriages.


     — translated by Ilya Kaminsky



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This Lamentable City
poems by Polina Barskova
Tupelo Press 2010