To prolong that is our direction;THE FLOWERS OF RUINS
Auezkhan Kodar Poems
1. SHOKAN IN PETERBURG
Petersburg is in fog... I can’t see
All its houses, and coaches, and people...
Eh! where is now a steppe horse for me!
For I could cease my pain if I’m cripple!
To gallop away... from them, rouged amours,
From them, fools of bad exalted rank.
Forgive me friend, you’re my friend Petersburg;
There are too many things that I can’t understand.
All in fog... and the duty of citizenship,
And the great mission of the Great Russians.
And I ramble as wolf among sheep,
Trying to be their guest in dissimulation.
I am not son of yours, but am real.
Fatherland waits for me, disease breeder.
My nation is doomed to standstill,
But I’ll be its intellectual leader.
Our ancient world writhes in labour.
Why this punishment is my best bet?
For my Kazakhs I am some strange neighbour,
For the Russians – a savage with epaulets.
And the circle grows narrow in the end.
Only mountain steeps do adore me.
«Life is nothing to the Eternity, friend!» –
Says some lieutenant in disgrace before me.
Where are you, Time?.. lend your hand...
How many broken fates in fog aloof...
Horse under Peter stands like candle,
Still, and digging cool air by his hoof.
2. LETTER TO NOWHERE
I’m gonna write a letter to shake off this creeping malaise.
In unfaithfulness to my Muses, and Muses excuse without fail.
And let the calendar have no more any pages of age,
Garden is full of apple and plum, though griefless and frail.
Calendar isn’t the garden, ‘cause emptied by my own hand.
Autumn is near. Let it be. Everything is still the same.
Change of colours and days will leave me to stillstand.
I don’t expect the news; for me any news will be lame.
Is in labyrinth of mind a gardener? A flower? I fell sick,
And I wander to send my call-sign to a star gone astray.
I live on unsteady earth like Abai’s surreal brick;
Universe is too small for me, but too wide is my way.
Is Time in rebellion, is Space pressed by his hand in pills,
Or routes are gone crazy, wayfarers are lead to Sodom?
But clutching at all, abused for forefathers’ standstill,
I will not find the recess where is my forgotten home.
I laugh at all, and in weakness I cry at so many offense.
Let this be called a pitfall, fate or unfortunate stone,
I’m not equal to myself, so I live on the off-chance,
Waiting for the encounter, and may be – with my own.
3. THOUGH I DON’T FLY...
Though I don’t fly in the swan flock arise,
I console myself: Is it all the same?
No faith, no knowledge, no hell, no paradise,
For me, Homunculus, to blame.
No one conceived me, nowhere be born;
Guess I’m an alchemist issue.
He designed me being in scorn,
For I do not miss you.
For I feel no smell of earth, no hurt
Walking on earth barefoot.
For living I’ll be in comfort,
For being alone I’ll feel good.
Remains only hateful plaster cast
For him who was born by dead.
Where it is from, my lasting vast
Fatigue with truth and lie, instead?
Girl, cause joy... Forgetful is joy.
Flap with eyelashes – clap-clop!
Alchemist tried to shaman with a toy,
But spirit of the old man’s gone flop.
White caps float at the troubled sea,
White horses go in the mind.
O how much rubbish you put into me,
You guardians of dish and mankind!
Denomination of thought is not small;
Way to abyss of knowledge is steep.
Pardon, now I drink too hard and dismal,
To pour out all of hardship.
Rubber of false civility became laze,
Rather it’ll be the slaughter or war.
Get me back to solid, get me back to clays,
But only to ground of my lore.
4. THIS IS MY TOWN...
This is my town, which regrets me –
With no chance to please my heart.
Parade of people and houses gets me
To no cure and with no warp.
I go out to another towns
For dreams of gardens and of minarets.
In aryks, there’s the water flowing down,
A coin to the tooth a tradesman gets.
A horseman’s riding, thin as plate,
With no helmet, no armour, no shield.
And purpose of his riding is too late
For those who’s wits in metaphysics field.
So some Prince has left his palace;
So Farabi’s gone from Otrar.
No priests, no healer: he’s not apace;
There’s no wizard sunburn so far.
And young man who just tries to hark
Nor Shariat, nor Law, but the call
Of earthly roads, winding like snake in dark,
Of ways to the unknown goal.
To Love and God, to heaps of trouble
In conscious which was quitted by Belief.
Beyond the fatal edges, to redouble
Absence of time, of measure and relief.
A little lingering by town gate,
He breathed in last gardens smell.
If he just knew the East’s mournful fate:
All roads after the fall turns to West’s hell.
How long he rides, he will not find
The land which was thrown over by him.
He’ll change himself by road behind,
The land will be not what it seemed.
And there’s no road that leads backward;
He’ll enter when the day gets dim –
With no chance to please his heart –
Into my town which regrets him.
5. MEMORIAL EVENING – 93
I came to Magzhan. People are many and not enough.
Rostrum on stage, long table, portrait of the poet.
In grinning face of him I find a pity and sorrow a-half,
And probably disdain to those who’s not here yet.
Now they came. A speaker in his wordy introduction
Talk of a fear, trying to get high his fear.
Now boring. I open my notebook because of seduction
To draw some beast showing fico with his longest ears.
Our evening in full swing. Speakers are like predators.
Lectures and actors stay at the start with no doubts,
And there, in the corner among important evening dictators
Some old quiet man, like a schoolboy at desk, sits about.
I know him. He’s the poet’s spiritual successor.
He was in nazi’s captivity and ten years in our prisoner camps.
No mercy on him has nor Brezhnev, nor Stalin, nor Hitler aggressors,
He was saved by his love to Magzhan, and Allah, with no scamp.
So, who is the elder? How long can we endure these fleetings
Used to make living by hanging in somebody’s home?
For what is this meeting? For what are these greetings,
When we can’t overcome all that hangman’s syndrome?
When we, your poets, have to make excuses
For that we are strange and our thoughts all are wrong;
Moneymakers of culture make us all confused;
They – free from the complex – take up where we belong.
Magzhan hated all these false elite groups and castes;
Magzhan was deceived just believing in it.
As like they were killing him, and so their shamefast is,
As well now they bring him to their murdering shit.
They want now another Magzhans to burn with his halo;
However they’re powerless to describe his grandeur;
Dull-witted, they talk of some pride and the symbolo,
With support of diehard and scientific men in their parlour.
I came to Magzhan. But I had not seen him, I had not
In this undertaker’s office, however and then, remain sitting.
In front of these thick-headed livings with no grace from God
Haughty pic of the poet was more – I guess – hitting.
6. WELL, I JUST CALL...
Well, I just call: isn’t it all?
Running I call so many years.
In such persistence m’sieur de Gaul
Long time ago may be here.
Well, I just call in easy order,
With timid esteem in my heart...
Who am I for you? Fax reporter
With eyes, and trunk, and ears apart.
Who am I for you? Weather’s whim,
A crumpled newspaper’s small font.
And my proud majestic chin
Says to you something wrong.
Who am I for you? Line in list,
Vain intuition of deceit.
I who can be, without risk,
Forgot; fog might delete.
And I still call... But you’re a grave.
Or you are in the flight to Mars?
Or you are realized in rave
Of embarrassed secretaries?
You are so pretty, pussy cat,
Favourite minion of Muses.
And right is Nurpeisov that
Strives to get your amuses.
I call you like a tooth to healer,
Like toadstool growing off-chance.
I beg you, for three centuries really
Would you strike all my balance.
With only hope to pharaohs
I’ll go to keep sand like a sphinx,
And you will sit here all alone,
No verse receiving, like a minx.
7. NIGHTLY ARUZES
1
With easy sorrow of God we are born,
Is it a cause that our days ain’t so scorn?
We’re taste of wine with guilty torn,
O how you are incautious, Sorrow!
So something lived before Creator?
And so Creator had his father later?
We’re tears, drops down his face by fate err,
When you were to so voracious, Sorrow.
Shed tears, he has known no grief,
But – ostracizing something – a relief!
And you nagged with him, coffin’s thief,
You’re in this passion so atrocious, Sorrow.
And we... we’re what drops off his face by fate err,
We’re dreams of languor, mute breath of Creator.
We must end all our ways and roads later,
And demonstrate you’re accusatious, Sorrow.
2
How good that he has us forgot!
We’re foam of days and graves’ lot,
Colours of butterfly’s wings on ingot,
In which you call us to Divine, O Sorrow.
And if we’re the beginning and the end,
And we have no father, mother, friend;
We’re crown of Creation and godsend,
Then for what is your outline, O Sorrow?
God died or our minds are dried?
We live like hostages of dark, and hide.
There is a emptied pouch, where is no light,
So please get us to illumine, O Sorrow.
Eye is confused this naked sight;
We cannot be Creator’s image tight;
Seek now for a next meteorite,
Where you’re a touch-me-not and fine, O Sorrow.
3
Sometimes with face, sometime face off –
We come to winding road, to go aloft;
Male knows end of the road and of
That you can foul the trail, O Sorrow.
Mosque is just phallus, church is vaginal vault,
People as semen waits for ovule’s stalk.
And like an idiot, bishop walks:
He never loves to hear such tales, O Sorrow.
Gods and Sisyphus, Sisyphus and fig;
The Culture come to rig of prick,
Ship of the thought sat on reef twig,
So get from stateroom’s veil, O Sorrow.
We’re born with some erection,
We’re babes of global warring action,
To prolong that is our direction;
Love’s like the way out to bale, O Sorrow.
8. LITERARY MEN’S HOUSE – 93
I’m in this house again, where once
I had my friends, I had my chance.
Now I have no joys and no finance.
These walls are tolerant to such a thing.
They don’t want to remember and to think.
But now I’m glad that walls remains intact.
I wonder of their window-throats: That’s fact?
Air’s still the same as in the April act,
When love was gone into the mountain alley,
Stamping twinges of conscience in valley.
There’s emptiness in hall. Empty is dining room.
Nobody’s here, a waitress in the bloom
Is able to receive you gestures with no dumb.
A time ago here served Azhar:
Uigurian eyes were burning from afar.
Writers, imposing with gray hair;
Like kitchen maids, they used to chatter air;
They’re always longing to their love-affairs.
Then I discovered, now and then,
My elder literary specimen.
Two poets here became my friends.
One’s full of poison, and another’s light-dream fiend.
However both were in that age under a ban.
Lies in the grave the one who liked a light.
Another still combats the unequal fight.
Ice has begun to break... Life on ice-floe,
Abyss is breath at our backs like foe.
And soon will play to death’s draw our clowns.
They’ll play... Exactly... but meanwhile, meanwhile
The wind of age chills both my sides profile.
Light fading... Dampness... blows through window chinks.
Vodka is poured, at distance rich gang drinks.
There’s my translation, I must go and think.
The house is changed, I’m still the same:
Incorrigibility is my lasting name.
They all don’t need me, and I am so strange.
I live like in a foreign land, in orphanage.
What can I do when that’s a desert age?
Yes, I am wreckage of the worldly sick.
Who in these sands needs me to seek?
A pity! I’m not smoker. Here’s no phone.
Clock leaves me with my losses all alone.
And over roofs flies tombs of pharaohs.
Here silence just supports the house’s walls.
At window – wet pine tree, and all.
9. THEY CONVINCE ME...
They convince me: well, you are
Not living today in the USSR.
And Kazakhstan is now the power –
The money to us and all flowers.
Well, we... we are the of scions Saks,
All ancient world we held well back.
And now we are all well done,
To have respect from Paris, London,
To be received in Washington for
Our great nomadic honor.
Well this is really my luck hit:
Vesnovka’s Residence permit.
And my apartment isn’t a cell,
And everyone brings his own well.
I am invited to Turks and to Peters,
To dreamscape of the fate that’s deters.
«Shed, – they say in proclamations, –
Your blood for Azerbaijanian nation!»
Can I overdo this mess
Of Derrida and vomitness?
They cram newspapers, books, booklets,
And I just call myself Poet?
Though they point me at the fact
That I’m Russian-speaking Kazakh.
I thought that I am negligible,
Ingenuous and intelligible.
Then as of boss I used to think
I offered to Zhumatai to drink.
He was kagan, I was gouan –
On two tattered divans.
The poets flowed to us together
To take khan’ council now and ever.
For bottle of wine – weight of dumb-bells –
We bestowed mountain peaks and swells.
They admitted me, paying a compliment,
To join to avant-garde movement.
And somewhere in their flat above
I used to eat suzma and plov.
Here making out the Diels’ lines,
Herakleitos was a mate of mine.
And gradually pace by pace
I made my entire space,
Without ranks, subordination,
With no cries of weal for nations,
All languages in friendly attitude
And rightly thinking never feud.
There is nor Asia, nor Eurasia,
And no Atlantis invasion.
And there escaping occurrence,
I test the whole world at its sense.
There Spirit doesn’t fell spirit.
And we lies, like a mussel, with Lilit.
Your offspring ripens in the womb,
And paternity of yours never become.
10. IN HOLIDAY PARK – 89
Not of yours, not of myself, and no one’s more,
Enemy of chiefs, of snobs, of hobos, of bores,
I tramp looking around in the crowded park.
Walking so many well-dressed people in sin
Of inattention to me, hurrying, going out and in,
Some hand in hand with friends, in vain and cark.
Alley is somber, and trunks of the trees
Are dense and wrinkled, leaves are ease,
Crowns are glossy in some lilac haze.
Laughs from the benches, old man with lap-dog,
Sportsman rides on his bicycle, running agog
All flows autonomously as in stereo snapped space.
Dinner on grass. Where is now Monet?...
Dzhigit approached me on his jennet,
Introduced himself: orchard warden of collective farm.
Swore by the name of Prophet: his argument was right,
He will never bear such a damaged insight!
I didn’t understand him, ‘cause I’ve been so far...
Peacefully, iron roes browsed and grazed,
Breeze crawled under my shirt collar, lazed,
Birds quirked inviting me to dialogue.
People ruminated «the soviet spare age»,
Chicken meat shashlik and sausage,
Going crazy a little by the market price shock.
On stage a compre called crowd to the show,
But concert hall was not full, indeed was hollow;
Compre, in any way, tried hard, like Kio.
There was a scent of profit, marasmus and sorrow;
Everyone seemed to me miniMoscow,
Secretly being afraid of wild outburst here.
Then I lied on the grass, which was soft and wet;
Under blue sky flowed some clouds as yet,
Growing grey in an order, idle and dissonant.
Who was loafing about will suffer sad fate;
This was non-flying weather which I’m gonna hate.
I wished precipitation good to come in the land.
11. I’LL COME HOME IN THE DZHUSALIN CALM...
I’ll come home in the Dzhusalin calm,
Where, like in India, cows roam by.
Where drowsy are trees, and we could come
Reached the roofs and be flush with the sky.
I’ll come home where the Kazurek flows,
Tiring banks with its own heed.
There while away the century my fellows,
And their home, it only their creed.
There men live in the rites of the labour and love,
In the usage of living and dead.
There the time hangs and sleeps on a wires above,
Over steppe that can’t bear them in stead.
They will carve a ram for me and give a drink,
Those who don’t care about Magzhan.
And I’ll begin in their shaky cosiness to think
Of all legends of the red and white bands.
Of all wagons of hope in so distant lands,
Of all cattle to fatten and slaughter.
O, Grave of Karkut, O, my remembrance,
Where will we find my oblivion’s quota?
I will hear the dombra chilling tune,
Become kinder ‘cause of forefather’s grief,
With this heartache now I’m still young.
Why am I growing dead when they live?
Well, I’ll ride in the steppe on my unreal steed,
Plunging into an abyss of night.
Pardon for my restlessness is all I need
From those who call me a son outright.
12. to Eugeny Kurdakov
Among the Universe’s wreckage,
Breathing in atomic groats,
Lost in glimmering mirage,
Like burning star thy soul floats.
Like burning hot and fuel star,
Like distant star we hardly stare,
Hardly sighing, weeping hard,
In only words is laying bare.
In words of love, in words of sorrow
From depth of our native speech
Thy soul can foresee tomorrow,
Still being on the body’s beach.
13. AT MOSCOW’S NEWLY BUILDINGS
In bottomless shaft of the city
I’m final sliver of truth;
In every autumn leaves
I lose myself.
All cars hits me in accident,
I hurt myself at every building corner,
At loneliness.
Here everything’s separated,
Here everything’s in itself,
All things run away from all.
Shadows from houses,
Reflection from lustre of signs,
And people...
People running away from people.
But only trees,
Losing flabby leaves,
Keep their immobility.
At metro: terrifying throng,
Queue into womb of metropolis:
Such hopeless hundred of faces.
14. I KNOW THEM ALL...
I know them all, but none
Put up with me a bit,
Well, now I will be gone
As scoundrel in transit.
And my home will be a station
Among dim smokes and sorrow.
And friends with no accusation
Will wave at me tomorrow.
And I will learn a vagrant’s life
With nonsense little effort.
In my heart you’ll be like knife
With fouls and fires aboard.
Well, a girl will grant me need
In distant quiet substation.
To my poems I will take heed
For girl of shepherd nation.
In unintelligible speech
And unintelligible tone.
She’ll understand in which
Boredom I feel me all alone.
Trying to wash my sins away,
At steppe near Baikonur,
The launch of all spaceships in vain
I’ll watch when I will lour.
Then I’ll set off to the Aral;
With no malice and spite,
I’ll walk on bottom dry and small,
Like all my soul inside.
15. THROUGH A THICKET I RAM AGAIN...
Through a thicket I ram again at twilight
In search of the road with ices everywhere.
It’s hard to see – are you wrong, or you’re right,
And how many steps to the next star you must fare.
Outwardly you’re calm, but thoughts twist like in dance.
Who can say where may lead them their road?
Caught by a cold of some awful substance,
You try to hide yourself in warm wrap of your coat.
You try to hide yourself, and even you don’t breathe,
Like a small blade of grass under winter ice dome.
And your town yawns sadly with the niche
Where must be your home, your one and only home.
Forced tramp, you are busy with that –
That you roll miles in the one trembling ball.
You may go to shrink. And they’ll reveal a secret
That you built your home... your built home at all.
16. THE AUTUMN GARDEN...
The autumn garden... Open are all ways...
And a bit confused by naked garden sight,
I don’t know which of paths to face,
And what I want to find in this tonight?
In ascetic strictness of thoughtful day
Shades of leafage tease with a mystery.
Nobody tries to urge me on away
And no one calls. This silence is merry.
And the air is like some value deposit
Of all the earthly and what fills my cup.
It worth so much that a little stalk of it
Trampled down by me be straighten up.
17. THE WRITERS UNION – 95
Here’s a strong smell of home-brew thing,
Like stepbrother of faeces and urine.
These ugly faces are like paper
With defecation blotted in.
No poets – only asses and aces;
Squandered on drink the given grace is.
They sell themselves, our Neros
For adulation’s opium traces.
Here’s an eerie taste of home-grown grass;
Such raves Marquise de Sade hadn’t pass.
Here everyone is proud to hiccup and snuff
Miasma of skunk of the noble class.
Here waste the talents and the fates,
Here Lilliputians devour Greats.
Stinking, here give a ball for all
Still-born and abortive mutates.
What World is for? Who needs the West?
When with these asses I am pressed,
And curse my nose for love to ozone,
If vogue lays the excrement stress.
18. AT SANATORIUM FOR VETERANS
It’s getting dark. So sad... I had not time to finish again.
Piles of books on my table, like a matter with nothing to gain.
At my window a poplars cut through black mica of night.
Dirty yellow walls are mute, they foreshadow my fright.
I came to this house, where the old stagers live to end their age;
With orders and medals which seem to be overage.
On their faces the century strolled with spades in a trench;
Under eyelids it’s growing dull like a mica to drench.
It’s in trenches of wrinkles, but behind are woe and shame;
It’s in their stooping shoulders which desired to remain the same.
The age created them ugly with cool Bolsheviks hands.
The age put them to onslaught... for knob in a river’s distance.
The age deprived their hope, their families, classes and names;
The age dismissed them for every little thing fiercely out!
Now they believe this is comfort, the real,
They munch toothlessly their sanatorium’s pap of oatmeal.
The age is ended and left shadows of all its old stagers.
It’s unusual for them, poor, without pretty bondage, yes.
And whenever I go out in passage, like patrol,
I see them sitting on their worn chairs in the hall...
I came to this house... Guess, there’s not for another place.
This was exile to some bedlam at my own guest race.
For I learn all my own, not to climb into Assembly of Gods,
Where old habitants give to my old men no odds.
19. ON NEW YEAR LAST DAY BEFORE...
On New Year’s Eve, a day before
I see the tree down in foyer:
The tree in beautiful decor
Sparkles with so many toys, oh yeah.
It’s cold and empty where is sparkles,
For all foyer serves just one porter.
She eats her ice-cream with loud crackles
Making her nose voluptuous shorter.
I sit beside on the phone,
If no reply I will go back.
Melancholy and me alone
In the atmosphere of wack.
I come again to my room now
To joy myself with Rilke chat.
But in the room all’s turned about
And unfinished can of sprat.
20. BY A WET PAVEMENT...
By a wet pavement
earthworm moves.
He doesn’t care nor for East,
nor for West,
nor for skies,
nor for land,
nor for the «Nevada»,
nor for the «Pamyat» Society...
nor for absence of soap in the «Vperyod» shop.
He crawls carelessly,
with no burden,
naked body.
He turns right or left,
and twists,
and turns back.
If you put leaf under him, he climbs,
no leaf – no ask from him.
By a pavement earthworm moves,
like pink hieroglyph of indifference,
pet of the sun, wind, boots with porous soles.
He’s meaningless, and so he crawls:
pink sinuous overflows,
silent joy of bioreceptors.
Moves, moves earthworm
looking like naked nerve,
somebody’s lost nerve,
running away into prehistory,
involution,
to know no any revolution,
but to find the starring egg.
only one,
for the Earth’s powder keg
will not to break down, and drown.
21. I CAME BY SIDE STREETS OF THE NIGHT...
I came by side streets of the night
In the blind alley where soul grows dumb.
In the cellar where you really might
Not to long, not to dream, to be numb.
Where with spinster whose name is Depression,
And who breathes to spasm in the chest,
And you write verse with no expression
By smoke of some cloud of careless.
Where, like grass blade, you try to remember
All about your nonverbal season.
Where ashamed of your immodest member
You scare in the yard all pigeons.
Where the buds blossom out in your soul,
Buds of all troubles you didn’t care of.
Where off grass when your breath and puff blow,
You touch women’s dress with care and love.
Where the shadows of trees are so funny,
And nobody owes nothing to none.
Where it all doesn’t matter, and running
Away from all, it makes love fun.
22. THE MELANCHOLY
Ah, where is such a sorrow from?
Such a cold gloom, why came to me?
In which of centuries I’d come
To mine as friend or enemy?
Though a far land attracted by dreams,
I didn’t take the easy goal.
Pity for men of mine, it seems.
Who suffers will forgive them all.
Let at my window all winds howl;
I’m like a flame before the gale.
Draft is a long time in my soul,
At morn and at dusk, as well.
I was the world, now I’m a hole.
Mole visits me for so long.
Sometimes I go to see a Mole.
Yeah, I am wrong, am wrong, am wrong...
They always wished me not to bark,
They always wished me no good.
I’m crooked like the question mark,
I’m mixed like some gloomy wood.
Nevertheless, the fable isn’t new:
Love in mirage, know in ptomaine.
I’m so defenceless like a dew,
And life is snow, and hail, and rain.
23. NO BABES, NO FAMILY, NO COINS, NO STEED...
No babes, no family, no coins, no steed, –
I live like a sage who have not any need.
With no needs I can bear my hell of solitude,
With no need I show to foes my friendly attitude,
With no needs I can listen to speeches of fool,
But over my sorrow how can I rule?
My sorrow is weakness of my mind and soul,
Because of what there’s too many to foul,
Because of what there’s nothing that I can explain,
Nothing to mend ’cause the clue is decaying.
I’m not God, but I swear, I’d be helper to God.
Am alone? O, yes! But this isn’t my lot.
Now I feel no sorrow, I feel no sag.
But only my body’s too painful to drag.
24. WHAT’S THE DEATH?
– What’s the death?
Nothing. No matter.
– Nuisance?
Nonsence. Something like flaws.
– But probably it is probability
Of unbelievable flows?
– Alas! It’s a flesh that presses the soul,
And so poor soul weeps.
– And then?
And then: pointlessness, disappointment,
breathless and eyelidless sleep.
– What’s the death?
Striking out of any registers:
official, domestic and all.
Uselessness of soap,
of eye-glasses and of comb,
uselessness of books and of scrolls.
– What’s the death?
Ultimate edge of a freedom
of no smoking, no drinking, no litter.
– What’s the death? It is vogue’s ancient kingdom.
And all must respect fashion fitter.
– What’s the death?
Running away from all our creditors,
escape in mirage, to nowhere.
– What’s the death?
Voyage to lagoon of dozing.
– Holidays, in general?
O, yeah!..
25. Charles Baudelaire
LE MORT JOYEUX
Dans une terre grasse et pleine d’escargots
Je veux creuser moi-mкme une fosse profonde,
Oщ je puisse а loisir йtaler mes vieux os
Et dormir dans l’oubli comme un requin dans l’onde.
Je hais les testaments et je hais les tombeaux;
Plutфt que d’implorer une larme du monde,
Vivant, j’aimerais mieux inviter les corbeaux
A saigner tous les bouts de ma carcasse immonde.
O vers! noirs compagnons sans oreille et sans yeux,
Voyez venir а vous un mort libre et joyeux;
Philisophes viveurs, fils de la pourriture,
A travers ma ruine allez donc sans remords,
Et dites-moi s’il east encor quelque torture
Pour ce vieux corps sans вme et mort parmi les morts!
26. TO POETRY
Now, again my eyes are overshadowed by tears?
I straggle from path into wrong slits and down.
I go up your voice I surprisingly hear,
But this is not voice, and only faint sound.
Fatal diversity gets me thunderstruck
By beginning and finish, belief and betrayal.
My boat sails away, but Г-shaped horse mug
Of fate always finds my defrayal.
And I’m lagging again by the path of my own,
And I don’t know again: am on earth or in heaven.
There I can’t find no airdrome, nor any lawn,
And nor bed of some pretty girl even...
There is nowhere to get no residence, nor bosom,
Doors are all shut, ears are all closed.
I’m going up to your feebly marked gloss on
My ancient bottom, instinctively lost.
Well, again my eyes are overshadowed by tears?
I straggle from path into wrong slits and down.
I go up your voice I surprisingly hear,
But this is not voice, and only faint sound.
27. MY HEAD HAS HAIRS...
My head has hairs,
Or may be bugs
Curling,
Swarming, pottering like in dump.
Eating, probable, my brain.
But I comb them accurately,
Trying to part them.
Trying to prove that
They must to lie
From left to right.
28. THE SILENCE IS FINE...
The silence is fine, and in vain
Try you hear by tympanum membrane.
Silence hangs over everyone’s roofs,
For new rich men the silence is proof,
It is not to be carried away,
Like «Caravan» by paper-boys a day.
Ultimately washed and clean,
It doesn’t want no Bunin, no Sirin.
It cools with the starch and the blue,
Hasn’t at market and debate the clue.
Soaked by a solution, so secretive,
It savours of breath of wet leaves.
It savours of earth and of humid air,
It cannot get something prepared.
Expending its branchy extremities,
It cannot fan off the eternity.
It soars over churches and minarets,
Talking only with the poets.
29. UNCONJUGATED TO CONCEIT OF MEN...
Unconjugated to conceit of men,
I follow only my sight.
This grove is like slumber golden,
Unfortunately forgotten tonight.
Unconjugated to nature itself,
I’m like sound which is being a sign.
Heart, my heart it is so hard to tell
That there is no other road of mine.
30. SLEEP IS SHUTTING TIGHT MY EYELASHES...
Sleep is shutting tight my eyelashes, tight, so tight,
And seducing knave Morpheus, ancient cheating wight.
Now he sits down on my eyelids, slides into my chest,
How can I return him backwards, can I do my best?
Fall asleep and fall like snow, thawing like snow-ship.
Where are you, my eyes and forehead, and my nose, and lips?
Slip out of mind and memory, losing flesh and blood,
Sail away into relaxing, warning blissful mood.
Sail away, I sail away now by a slow stream.
There I’ like a breathing ball in the unreal and dream.
Far from mind and far from body, far from depth of things,
Breathing with no nose, and with no ears hearing.
There is clearest sensation, and my soul is gay,
There is no today, tomorrow, there’s no yesterdays.
There is one and only hour, there all live in one;
What we see here like the heaven there seems bottom down.
There, beyond the edge of touching and backside of day,
If I fall asleep and dreaming, please still keep away.
31. TO MOMMY
Dark-complexioned, with wrinkles like chapped,
Brown-eyed and broad face.
For me she is more than a mother lap,
For me she’s like whole home place.
Fussy wonder in her old kerchief,
O how nice she was greeting her guests!
Now from the photograph she’s looking stiff,
With no hint of a live interest.
What to tell, how to show my sorrow
Of all that we had left her behind?
In all that I have now to borrow
I am not able to make fine my mind.
In all that was cheated I grow feeble,
With no love I have buried tonight;
At her little grave, imperceptible
Under huge steppe moon so bright.
32. MY LITTLE DAUGHTER...
My little daughter, my sweet baby,
My subtle speck of only hope.
And you lift up my vigour, may be,
With childish prattle to the top.
You lie as freely as in aul lawn,
Sometime you look like stern granddad.
You wash in smile your cheek-bones
To make Auezkhan’s own gad.
You’re so nice and so pleasant?
But sometimes, as like in drama,
You in a taciturn mood present
The reminiscent of your mama.
And you unite in cast marvellous
Features of Turkis, Mongols, Sarts.
You’re like our ancestors’ hellos,
And you’re like their unturned card.
You are a promise of a new life –
With no damn, mistakes and tears.
You, as my native speech’s wife,
I long to hug for all my years.
33. I LIE WITHOUT A SLEEP BY NIGHT...
I lie without a sleep by night,
In thoughts meandering about.
I have templeache, or Satan hides
Inside me if I’m dead drunk out.
Now liverache, and now headache,
And now attraction to the hell:
I look around: What God makes?
And only deuce smirks from his dwell.
Tonight I hardly breathe and groan.
Everyone sleeps, and no one harks.
Reduced all of my words in moan,
I start to sing out in the dark.
Now in my throat I have no moss,
Tongue like a bell tolls in my mouth.
Chasing the deuce in clouds to cross,
I crop up in dreamscape’s drought.
34. ALMATY – 98
Hobo freezed to death in snow,
Girl stands undress.
In cafe guzzle a stew bestowed,
And on the look-out is waitress.
Birdlike the brake still cries,
Policeman with staff isn’t dolt.
And on hobo’s dead blue eyes
From skies the white moss falls.
35. MAITRE LIES DECEIVING ALL ON AIR...
Maitre lies deceiving all on air,
Clock is slowly cutting words.
Let Caesar move his lips and stare,
Attentively new Brutus heard.
In window-pane a little dog tries,
There stands a robbed birch’s bole.
In winter you economize,
But all your savings are so small.
The winter is as white as mouse.
In instant wasting heaven’s loan,
It alights from the top of house
And from all nests which stay alone.
Winter’s gone down in rustle of tyres,
In talks of fuel and firewood.
Not bad to have the wine entire,
But abundance of birds is good.
36. LIKE PEAS UP WALL, THE RAIN RAPS...
Like peas up wall, the rain raps,
I see in it meaningless fries.
Gorgona, I caress your lap,
If not to see your eyes.
Lavish layman gives pittance,
Waiting for bounties means bad.
In other modality’s instance
I smile like Carroll’s cat.
Rain raps fathoming in cerebral.
No, Epikureis, I’m not wax.
I’m just a hollow zebra,
I’m scarred with no rod stacks.
Ah, what to catch on to pull through?
Palm cannot grasp no grain.
Nothing can help me like may do,
Like it does the cosmic rain.
37. SLIM SHOULDERS OF TREES...
Slim shoulders of trees overhang floppy,
Quilt with invisible whips.
Like horde of energetic grasshoppies,
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