A walk around the city
walking around the city
I met a group of policemеn.
they were moving through the sidewalk
and carrying handmade posters:
"say "no" to civil arbitrariness".
"stop pubertal lawlessness".
"we are your dads".
"our past belongs to us".
"Sunday is our weekend".
also policemen were carrying
bunches of flowers and balloons.
wearing their black uniform and white helmets
they looked like plush pandas...
suddenly two dozen of people
ran out of the subway station,
those, who belonged to the generation of YouTube and Instagram.
kids started beating up policemen,
they were throwing plastic glasses towards,
pouring carrot juice over them,
and they spat in one officer's face
with a gum.
this bacchanalia took about five minutes.
teenagers disappeared as soon
as they had come. some policemen
were dragged in the subway station with teens.
going back home I was thinking:
"poor policemen,
their work isn't a picnic,
moreover, some pimply bastards
bully them..."
in the evening I read on Facebook
I became a witness of making
an advertisement
about a vegan burger of a new generation.
"how good it is - I thought, -
these cases
can't happen in real life".
Translated from Russian by Sofia Frolova
Monuments
let us destroy all the monuments
to the slavers, commanders,
revolutionaries, tyrants, quadrigas,
centaurs and cowboys. and then let us bring
to the main square of the city
all our sores, mental disorders,
inferiority complexes and insomnia.
let's build the monument of generation from all these things.
and when our barefoot children learn
how to say the word "pendulum",
we'll lead them to the monument
and say: "we were trying our best
to make the monument to the future.
here are you, children, crowbars and ice-axes,
destroy this monument
of our weakness, build
another monument to yours".
Translated from Russian by Sofia Frolova
Seizing the space
after moving to a new city
you put things in their places –
cars street lights houses neighbors
sky planes
after the space is filled up
you can't find a place to yourself
and you move again
Translated from Russian by Sergey Tenyatnikov
Midnight
a train approaches One like a Zero
and crosses out the field.
if the train was melted into a bullet,
it would follow a crazy trajectory and pierce
each country, be it a whole continent or an island of monkeys,
like a forehead.
but at the beginning of its journey,
the train expands into a snake,
crawls from nest to nest,
swallows one city after another
like eggs, gains slowly speed.
to some extent, each train
writes its own novel.
and when the narrator hears a Choo-Choo
he sticks panicky to the window
fearing that his journey
will end in some hole
where the rails are twisted into spirals.
the train moves from mountains
to the sea across the plain,
fills the emptiness with itself,
steals time from space,
divides the world into this side and that one.
the narrator strains its eyesight,
peers into the approaching darkness.
the claws of rain scratches at the window.
the driver, a star wiped off from his shoulder,
says: next station - Midnight.
Translated by Sergey Tenyatnikov
Non-selected work
how does the earth keep people ...
trampled by the living,
paved with the dead,
filled with citations of the streets
and prose of the landscapes.
how does the shelf keep books ...
shabby covers,
mold, ashes, dust.
and as flat as the shelf without books
is the earth without people.
Translated by Sergey Tenyatnikov
Sofa
let us buy a new sofa –
the color of wet sand.
we will fold it away and
fold it out,
will make love on it,
spill wine and tea,
jump on it.
and after we will lie like Jacks from a deck of cards,
as if we were kids again
and our heels are
not hooves shod with callused skin.
let us buy a new sofa
like Hollywood actors buy islands.
let us make a home on this sofa by the sea
which has been oversalted by the God
who is in love with us.
Translated by Rob Compton
A soldier is buried with honors
a soldier is buried with honors
live on all channels
without gun, without splinters
in a sunset-red uniform
one hears no rain, no grievance
one sees no faces, no stars
the soldier lays himself into the grave
embracing his empty stomach.
he is a key which has found no door
he is a God who did not father his son.
his heart becomes loam
and has no place for peace.
Translated by Rob Compton
I don't live in New York City
I don't live in New York City,
I do not count killed ducks.
my name (twice as long as that of Lorca)
does not turn the corner like a limousine.
I extending my arms, want to touch this world
which has been discarded into the gutter,
stand for a long time at the clanking intersection
and cannot resolve to pick up the bunch of keys.
Translated by Rob Compton
Free interpretation of a supper in a doner kebab shop
The sun is falling over the town
like a tennis ball over a playing ground
and lands as a stain on the green wallpaper.
The sky’s bathtub is filling up with water.
The meal is flavoured with separation.
Ingredients: cabbage, carrots, meat and onion.
The rain is scratching at the window, grinding
beetroot on the sunset- grater.
Outside – 50 degrees Fahrenheit –
not too hot, not too cold. The plate
is being emptied like post-season Antalya.
A customer armed with knife and fork
leaves but the onion rings.
The Turkish feel cramped in the snack bar.
The customer shuts the door. The sun
is fading away like light in a fridge. Wearing an apron
the Janissary attends his integration course.
Translated by Carolin Hristev & Joanna Carle