Alexander Vvedensky
Page 4
so they can dine with mermaids
in these sea houses
so they can sample sea cognac
in these watery bars
we believe that we won’t die
that life has some continuation
fish glimmer with silver
we love beer we love spirits
with ladies play at procreation
dourdina my bride-to-be
looked at my medals feelingly
but the whole year spring and summer
did not leave the water closet
and I despaired extinguished
said to myself you’re not a rooster
nor the digestive tract nor duck
and the extension of the stomach
foul attendant on the innards
the void appeared at this point
and I saw everything is winsome
but smarmy distressing very loathsome
and I incline myself to you O sea
on documents the letters misery
behold are writ in every quarter
and I see hundreds of categories
like fish swim in the water
The servants bring in a large sofa
on the sofa people birds
thoughts mice and bushes
all with mournful faces
all with empty eyes
birds walk on the grass
like dreams on the head
people lie around yellow
boats shine clang
thoughts steal into the grave
across rain and across might
mice walk along houses
with the look of attic minds
and transparent and light
bushes sleep under the flag
VOICE
come here all of you
and light your candles
demon vegetable rain knight
our guests shall be this night
sea shore and star
we shall hold a boundless feast
a dark angel flutters out
of the deep the nest
ANGEL
is everyone everyone
gathered here
has everyone sat
on the floor
the musicians have assembled
like penguins on a cliff
the sea went out on the town
arm in arm with a star
and the sea said: stop
thinking running taradiddle
think think think think
run around jump complain
death will extend its morose arm
too late the doctors will alight
like swans, relations
will flock to the bed
other labors will ensue
flies will fly around in the body
but what help can I offer you
children people in this night
HUNTER
sea sea lady
you are our only hope
we come to you trembling
DIGNITARY
shut up ignoramus!
dear sea O sea
we cannot see anything
accept us O darling
second and watery divinity
like beasts we run around in darkness
bared of rapiers thoughts tuxedoes
in our hand a jar of light smokes
look at this O mighty one
on our head a halo clatters
our end is coming it is come
SEA
I can’t
SEA DEMON
and what did I say?
HUNTER
I think, I cry
SEA
I too mean nothing
1930
[E.O.]
God May Be Around
THE SACRED FLIGHT OF FLOWERS
The sun shines forth in disorder,
flowers on the flowerbed fly,
the fatty earth is lying here like a lynx.
Flowers said, open up, sky,
and take us in.
The earth remained subordinate to its bitter destiny.
Ef sits on the table at the feet of an imaginary flying Maiden. A massive night.
EF
Hello young lady motion
you give me pleasure
with your farfetched flight
and the sweep of your legs.
Yes your legs have a splendiferous sweep,
when you resplendent glisten and fly over the swamp
whose water hisses—
you have no need of any roads,
you are a stranger to human fear.
MAIDEN
I am not afraid of anything, true.
I exist without fear.
EF
Hey indigenous beauty, soon they’ll be holding executions here,
wanna go?
I keep trying and trying not to burn up,
you know.
MAIDEN
It is interesting, whom will they execute?
EF
People.
MAIDEN
How cute!
Will they cut or bite off their heads.
It makes me want to puke.
All those about to die get cold feet.
They have activity of stomach,
before death it lives as hard as it can.
But why are you afraid to burn up, man?
EF
Aren’t you also afraid, dummy?
You float like a peak over a mountain,
your magic figure sparkles like laughter.
Are you a woman or a bird?
Any match makes me disturbed.
For each match that strikes
a bird cries yikes!
Courage expires
while you blacken in fires.
Ashes sitting in a cup
will stink up the table,
are you blind or what,
I cannot tell.
MAIDEN
What do you do every day.
EF
Alright. I’ll tell you.
In the morning I rise at two,
glare at the minute in anger,
then yawn, shiver.
On the chair rests my head
looking up at me impatiently.
Okay, okay, I think, I’ll put you on.
My glasses fill with song
and I see seafoam in the window.
Ten hours later I lie down,
I lie I whistle I revolve,
then I unglue my head. Then sleep.
Yes, and I also sometimes pray to God.
MAIDEN
So you pray then?
EF
Certainly.
MAIDEN
You know, God gallops
eternally.
EF
How do you know,
idiot.
You might be fine at flying
but you’re as dumb as a boat.
MAIDEN
Nu, watch your language.
You think you can live that way for long.
I tell you, beware,
learn augury, telling fortunes.
Is something coming to get you?
Maybe life will forget you.
EF
I am confused.
My head is smoking already.
MAIDEN
Do you even know what time means?
EF
I’m not acquainted with time.
Will I see anyone wear it?
I can’t touch it or anything.
It’s fiction, it’s an ideal.
Was there day? There was day.
Was there night? There was night.
I forgot nothing.
Were those four corners there? They were.
Are they there now? Tell me they aren’t, weird sister.
Day is night sweat-soaped,
that time of yours is just a rope.
It spans and spans,
but snip it and it remains on your hands.
Sor
ry munchkin,
I didn’t mean to call you names.
MAIDEN
A man who reeks of the grave
is no baron or general,
or prince or count or commissar
or Red Army soldier.
That man is Balthazar,
he won’t be around much longer.
I can’t take offense
at a man-corpse.
It’s not like I’m Mazepa or Aida,
whereas you who can’t see your own end,
come with me.
EF
I will go without apprehension
to watch someone else’s execution.
SPARROW, pecking grains of happiness:
Lord, this world is magic,
everything is good.
I sing out a prayer,
pulverized by the view
of mighty and mysterious
things that ride
on the backs of stormclouds
like sacks with candles inside.
All is resplendent O my Lord,
fine and clever in this world.
Sea moose spoon jug
pray inaudibly to God,
so do candle horseman man
Chechen exile and barn.
A crowd drags about. There are cows, otherwise known as bulls, walking.
COWS
What are they gonna do here?
Otherwise known as BULLS
They will slaughter, they will slaughter.
COWS
Whom? you? whom? us?
VOICE
Cows, in times of cholera don’t drink the kvass
and everything will be marvelous.
Cows, otherwise known as bulls, quietly depart.
Appears the tsar. The tsar appears. It grows dark in the eyes.
TSAR
Now, priceless crowd,
gather round.
Here by this pillory
a theater of law shall be.
The executioner will execute,
there is neither Greek nor Jew.
Everyone come contemplate,
attend and don’t scintillate.
Come muffle the condemned’s moaning
with shouting, with howling, with guffawing.
Bonjour executioner,
walk I tell you in a whisper.
There are all sorts of people:
laborer people, idler people,
eating people, dark blue people,
dapple feeble purple people,
stooped people, grouped people
and people parallelepiped like a steeple.
Yet all of us poor folk once alone
weep knowing that we have no soul.
It’s damaging to self-esteem
to think that you are just steam.
That you die and oops there isn’t any you.
Behold my tears.
EXECUTIONER
Mine also.
CROWD
Behold our tears.
THE CONDEMNED
Ours also.
A horrible weeping took place on the square. Everybody suddenly felt very afraid.
Enter Ef and the Maiden.
MAIDEN
What dummy likes to go to executions
may make a heady contribution.
EF
Look strumpet at the scaffold
but don’t tread on my tail, okay?
Beginning now will occur.
The crowd like London-town roared.
It seized Ef by the hands-and-feet,
and dragging him onto the scaffold
it finished off his vital organ
and knocked him with a vein and feather
and added just a spot of tin
and then with an ax of rope
it chopped off his top.
He passed away.
TSAR
He’s in a bad way.
Tell me what’s his name.
Here is my palace. I should like to go in
and have a drink with my friends by the fire.
IMAGINARY MAIDEN, vanishing:
His last name is Fomine.
TSAR
Ah what horror. This is for the last time.
The executioner exits running.
Fomine lay without motion
on red lead boards.
It seemed to him satisfaction
perched upon mustache whiskers.
Should I stroke, he thinks, a whisker
or maybe scratch an eye
or let out a holler
or go off and breathe.
But how, dear Fomine,
how are you going to holler,
how are you going to scratch,
you don’t exist, Fomine,
you’re dead, get it?
FOMINE
No, I don’t get it.
I’m alive.
I’m relative.
MAIDEN
Who are you, relative of heaven,
snow, bottle, or demon.
Are you concept or number.
Come Fomine, be my lover.
FOMINE
I appear to be dead.
Go away.
She hurries to leave.
FOMINE
Ye gods, I understood the horror
of my sad condition.
In tears, making the greatest exertion,
I cannot recall my skull.
It’s as if it never existed.
What a disaster.
He publicly acknowledges his desperate condition and runs with difficulty.
MAIDEN
Really Fomine, you ran away,
yet you’re here again.
FOMINE
Not all of me ran.
When the sea surf roared,
the high billow rose,
I recalled my pocks,
I howled and felt gross.
When smoke curled upwards from the chimneys
and all was in a ring
and wrinkles cut across my face
and all my hair was graying,
I flashed, I crashed, I burned with rage
at the approaching of old age.
And when the forest lost its leaves,
when in the sky a demon stirred,
there was a rising of the Lord,
I in despondency crushed fleas.
Observing the struggle of heavenly forces,
I mowed down insects.
But now, dear dummy,
I’m downsized,
I’m headless.
MAIDEN
Incorporeal, the hour
settles on the coffin’s cover
where a rotting figure smells,
the second thousand of the oxen
go from the city separately.
Your lot is dumb,
Fomine, Fomine.
A dead gentleman runs in.
They turn somersaults.
PETR IVANOVICH STIRKOBREYEV burns logs alone in his room:
Soon the youths will come,
soon the girls will arrive
as an aid to relaxation.
Soon eternity, soon night.
For I am feeling kind of bored,
it’s been a while I squealed with laughter,
it’s been a while I thundered vodka
into my maw from the monotonous glass.
I will mount the palm tree
and then lie around sultry.
Rings the machine, named telephone.
Hello. This is Mitya, right?
VOICE
No, it’s a meteorite.
STIRKOBREYEV
The heavenly body?
VOICE
Yes. I heard you’re having a party.
Compared with planets I may be only a toy
but parties are something I truly enjoy.
Can I come?
STIRKOBREYEV
Do fly by. (Hangs up the phone.)
I’m justly proud: a chunk of heaven
expresses in
terest in my feast,
my gathering of ardent guests,
the knockabout of their bones.
Yet hark. Either a vertebra broke
or the phone awoke.
Peter Ilyich? Pardon, this is?
VOICE
Stirkobreyev, it’s me. Paralysis.
STIRKOBREYEV
Hello. (Aside.) Oh hell, rather.
How can I help you?
VOICE
You hear the sizzling of hell,
malodorous Stirkobreyev?
Why do you need pomade, do tell,
faster, I haven’t got all day.
STIRKOBREYEV
Pomade is very necessary to me right now,
the princess will arrive here,
she is descendant of Rurik.
VOICE
I also will arrive.
STIRKOBREYEV
Hour from to hour not more easily.
I will go I will prepare spark plugs,
and that by even wrong by the time
will thrust to us in guests haemorrhoid.
Room goes out. Note: it is temporary.
Bells be heard. Guests enter.
NIKOLAI IVANOVICH
How’s business?
STEPAN SEMENOVICH
Full of uneaseness.
MARIA NATALIEVNA
My water just now almost broke
but then it turned out to be a joke.
Where’s the restroom here,
we drank a lot of kvass along the way.
FOMINE
Hello, Boris. Is it you I see?
STIRKOBREYEV
Hello, O sea.
FOMINE
How? how dare you.
I shall avenge myself.
A piece of chalk loomed large into his view.
He thought: I won’t abide
that great offense of Stirkobreyev’s.
Flies flew around, and also bolides.
FOMINE
If I’m the sea,
where are my crests?
If I’m the sea,
where are my masts?
The cheerful contented guests
meanwhile gnawed bare the halva
with the grim avidity of a wave.
The door opens. A meteorite flies in. He’s cold.
METEORITE
Like a church thief
that plundered an idol,
I flew in to observe
this world wall.
GUESTS, singing:
A grave grows in the forest
under the Easter trees.
Who’s brought here on a stretcher?
Paralysis disease.
STIRKOBREYEV
Everyone’s gathered.
Let’s sit and eat.
FOMINE
I remind you Boris,