And when the word's naturalness itself vanishes

And when the word's naturalness itself vanishes,
growing deathly still, the foliage ceases its rustling,
and brittle, the garden plum offers no comfort,
you yourself, born at the explosion's epicenter,
are locked into the salt and gunpowder of corruption.

The fruits of the apricot tree now dangle above you,
and sour cherries, whose berries are wingless dragonflies:
like magnificent music, this garden has been exulted,
and the poison, indistinguishable from glucose,
has coagulated into blood, disabling your iPad.

And not a single soul will dare disturb this way of life,
this archaic melody, this sunset at the decline of empire;
this can opener will not shred the quotation marks,
the caretaker has been fired, the birdies no longer tweet,
and the sardines drunks swill wallow in tomato sauce.

But, occasionally, having celebrated at the wake
the demise of my own verses, I trudge alone
from a literary soirée and the stars are transformed
into a soothsayer's tea leaves and I dissolve
to spend the night sleeping in the abandoned garden.

In this place, the shadows are like gaps in memory,
and the sleep of sausage-munching illegals is disturbed –
I would give them all a good drubbing, each in turn,
for their lewdness, their drinking songs, their filth,
but in the morning I hear: “Who am I, where am I,
what's going on?” as sobering up they pray. To whom?


Translated from the Russian by Alex Cigale