Transitions №6

Author: Liliya Gazizova

Translated by Svetlana Gluzman

 
Theme of Lara

When in the air
Of Anatolian December
Is hanging theme of Lara,
It catches you by surprise.
And you find yourself not ready
For tachycardia,
For which heart turmoil masks,
Or for life itself,
Which you face again,
In another unplanned instance
Naked without clothes
And without words.
And then rescue can
Come from the sky
Offering one of several types of precipitation
That can distract
Clouded mind
By directed movement
Of wet particles.
But even they
But even they
Cannot save me
From me.

 
At the airport

You will wait for me at the airport
Handsome and composed.
But you will lose your cool
When passionless voice will announce
That my plane is delayed.
You will get to the big window
And will scrutinize your sky.
Life will hum around you,
But you will be lost in thought for a long time.
I will show up last.
All the passengers from my flight
Will be long gone.
You will stand there alone
Lost and detached.
I will see you from far away
But will stop for some reason.
Our eyes will meet.

 
Lion’s roar and chicken’s cluck

Kind Perenov gave me a present –
Lion’s roar
And chicken’s cluck.
All day long I walked around the city
And everybody said: —
Look,
Here is a woman with red hair
Carries in her hands
Lion’s roar
And chicken’s cluck.
And they took pictures with their mobile phones.

They wouldn’t let me into stores
They said that
With lion’s roar
And chicken’s cluck
They couldn’t serve me.

Only a fruit seller
Amazed by them
Gave me an apple.

Tired of them,
Roar and cluck,
I decided
To set them free
And gently put them in the water.
There they swam away,
Talking to each other,
Lion’s roar
And chicken’s cluck.

 
Magic spectacles

Oh how I dreamed about them –
Bifocal and spheroprismatic
Simply magic spectacles
Curing nearsightedness.
And I wanted to meet
Physicist Utehin,
Who invented them.
I always carried around with me
The newspaper clipping
To show it to Kazan ophthalmologists.
They read it and didn’t believe it,
They said it was impossible.
When I was twelve
I longed to take off glasses
To finally become beautiful.
And there we were, dad and I,
In the kingdom of ophthalmology –
In Moscow Helmholtz Institute.
The doctor with tatar last name – Akchurina
Didn’t even bother to read
My old worn newspaper clipping.
“Physicists are not doctors” – She said,
And added:
“He is a charlatan”.
My dream was shattered.
But soon – how lucky! –
Contacts were created.
And I threw my glasses out the window
Yes, exactly right – out the window
I acted in a very
Immature way.
But to this day
I have my doubts –
Why couldn’t spectacles
With a magic name –
Bifocal and spheroprismatic —
Make the world
Clearer
And happier.

 
Nobody’s fault

Fall is time
When it is
Nobody’s fault
And the future
Doesn’t have gender
Like tatar verbs.

Fall is time
When I contemplate for a long time
Whether to put summer shoes away
Or to leave them in the hallway.
Fall is time
When something momentary
Lives longer in memory
And secondary things become important.
When I clarify –
With fear –
My notion of happiness.

 
Rain in Liege

If you are to get caught in the rain,
Then let it be in Leige,
Without an umbrella
And with nearby cafe across the street.
To get soaked
Not to the skin,
But to the chills.
To take a seat
At the table in the corner
To wait for a waiter for a long time
And not to hurry anywhere
Wondering in awe
About the future.