Transitions №2

Author: Olga Koltsova

Translated by Dmitri Manin

* * *

Draw a hieroglyph with your narrow-eyed needle on wax,
on the pliable hot wax of eyelids, and break the blood seal,
let the needle eye squint, rummage hard in the heavenly racks;
don’t annoy me again in the moat with your faceted spiel;

wind will enter the heart, its steps rustling on steep-rising stairs,
where a throng of the winged soars high in the air of the night,
and the soul will respond to the grumbles, complaints, mournful airs,
gaining answers in candlewax drips with recovering sight;

neither harbor nor house in the troublesome dark, nothing left,
only, riding the wind, an extinguished star’s light faintly shines
and the gash in the clouds opens, swells with mercurial heft —
it’s the crystalline lens, the seared vessel of ominous signs.

 
* * *

Perhaps all isn’t what it is, all crazy buzz and haze,
the Zodiac, a Martin Zadek and a flying maze.

All is, perhaps, just fuddled, flawed, a total omigod,
a pickled thistle in a pod, buffoonery and fraud.

All is, perhaps, just fruitless strain, day after day no gain,
All goes to waste and down the drain, even the dawn’s in vain.

A fiddler on the roof, on watch, on sundial, on the rise,
a bugler over Krakow flies against the smoldering skies.

All probably just isn’t it, a lotto, and all that,
Geppetto, Toto, and a great big waterproof hat.

Tobacco probably ran out, the devil’s sneer is lewd.
There was a man who left his home and disappeared for good.

 
* * *

a string, you say? — well, I would much rather say: tuning fork,
a membrane, a pupil, a hangnail, a sore wound; as though
one yanked the emergency brake at full throttle, full throw —
a plankton of people in total confusion and murk;
exhort me to act with decorum, to temper my antics,
keep saying, keep saying: you mustn’t, you shouldn’t, you can’t;
we’ve learned it by heart: in agreement we can’t be content,
because the obedience’s age is from nine and to six;
but I’ll disobey, for I want to eavesdrop on the sly,
To witness spells cast, vows professed, and perhaps curses made —
The endless thread rolls off the wheel never broken or frayed,
I follow the skein unaware of the where, whence and why;
but there’s no sense, you will say, in this hazy word stew,
no sense, I’ll reply, but an essence wells up between lines,
the soul throws a bluff, soars up over the rainbow, and shines,
a fortune slip drawn once again by the fraud cockatoo.