As you pour yourself a scotch
Crush a roach or check your watch
As your hands adjust your tie people die
In the towns with funny names
Hit by bullets, caught in flames
By and large not knowing why people die.


*Joseph Brodsky

Today they say "Goodbye" to someone,
Tomorrow they will say "Farewell, forever"
And the wound in your heart bleeds profusely.
Tomorrow someone returns home,
Only to stand upon the ruins of their own city.
And someone will fall from the top of a crane...

So take care of yourself... Be careful...

Tomorrow morning, someone lying in bed
Will realize that there's no cure for his sickness,
Someone leaving home will get into a car accident.
Tomorrow, somewhere in a hospital
The hand of a young surgeon will slip.
Someone walking in the woods will fall into a mine...

So take care of yourself... Be careful...

Tonight an airplane flies above us,
Tomorrow it will crash into the ocean
And all the passengers will die...
Tomorrow, somewhere, who knows where?
There will be war, an epidemic, a huge blizzard...
And black holes in the vastness of space...

So watch out for yourself, Be careful...


Viktor Tsoi

I said fate plays a game without a score,
and who needs fish if you've got caviar?
The triumph of the Gothic style would come to pass
and turn you on--no need for coke, or grass.
I sit by the window. Outside, an aspen.
When I loved, I loved deeply. It wasn't often.

I said the forest's only part of a tree.
Who needs the whole girl if you've got her knee?
Sick of the dust raised by the modern era,
the Russian eye would rest on an Estonian spire.
I sit by the window. The dishes are done.
I was happy here. But I won't be again.

I wrote: The bulb looks at the flower in fear,
and love, as an act, lacks a verb; the zer-
o Euclid thought the vanishing point became
wasn't math--it was the nothingness of Time.
I sit by the window. And while I sit
my youth comes back. Sometimes I'd smile. Or spit.

I said that the leaf may destory the bud;
what's fertile falls in fallow soil--a dud;
that on the flat field, the unshadowed plain
nature spills the seeds of trees in vain.
I sit by the window. Hands lock my knees.
My heavy shadow's my squat company.

My song was out of tune, my voice was cracked,
but at least no chorus can ever sing it back.
That talk like this reaps no reward bewilders
no one--no one's legs rest on my sholders.
I sit by the window in the dark. Like an express,
the waves behind the wavelike curtain crash.

A loyal subject of these second-rate years,
I proudly admit that my finest ideas
are second-rate, and may the future take them
as trophies of my struggle against suffocation.
I sit in the dark. And it would be hard to figure out
which is worse; the dark inside, or the darkness out.


Anonymous Submission

Joseph Brodsky

Citizen, enemy, mama's boy, sucker, utter
garbage, panhandler, swine, refujew, verrucht;
a scalp so often scalded with boiling water
that the puny brain feels completely cooked.
Yes, we have dwelt here: in this concrete, brick, wooden
rubble which you now arrive to sift.
All our wires were crossed, barbed, tangled, or interwoven.
Also: we didn't love our women, but they conceived.
Sharp is the sound of pickax that hurts dead iron;
still, it's gentler than what we've been told or have said ourselves.
Stranger! move carefully through our carrion:
what seems carrion to you is freedom to our cells.
Leave our names alone. Don't reconstruct those vowels,
consonants, and so forth: they won't resemble larks
but a demented bloodhound whose maw devours
its own traces, feces, and barks, and barks.

*Joseph Brodsky

Greet death
with your hands in your pockets,
slouched back, cool,
collected, and confident.
Wear a hint of a grin
and a dash of cologne.
Say What took you so long?
Say You're behind the times, man.
Say Dead is the new black.
Coffin is the new condo.
Pallor is the new tan.
La vida muerta.

Greet death
with a fistful of black-eyed susans,
butterflies in your stomach,
and two tickets to tomorrow's sunrise.
Wear your father's cufflinks
and your mother's wedding ring.
Say I brought these for you, babe.
Say Kiss me, kiss me.
Say But wait until the sun comes up.
Just until daybreak.
I want to show you something.
Hasta la muerte, te amo.

Greet death
with a knife at your own neck,
chin up, throat bared,
cardiac in overdrive.
Wear nothing.
Wear nothing.
Say Bring it on *******!
Say Only on my terms.
Say nothing
and open your throat.
and bleed to completion.
El final, el final, el final.

This poem © Gabriel Gadfly. Published Oct 29, 2009

Yevgeny Yevtushenko*


No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A drop sheer as a crude gravestone.
I am afraid.
            Today I am as old in years
as all the Jewish people.
Now I seem to be
                a Jew.
Here I plod through ancient Egypt.
Here I perish crucified, on the cross,
and to this day I bear the scars of nails.
I seem to be
            Dreyfus.
The Philistine
              is both informer and judge.
I am behind bars.
                Beset on every side.
Hounded,
       spat on,
              slandered.
Squealing, dainty ladies in flounced Brussels lace
stick their parasols into my face.
I seem to be then
                a young boy in Byelostok.
Blood runs, spilling over the floors.
The barroom rabble-rousers
give off a stench of ***** and onion.
A boot kicks me aside, helpless.
In vain I plead with these pogrom bullies.
While they jeer and shout,
                         "Beat the Yids. Save Russia!"
some grain-marketeer beats up my mother.
0 my Russian people!
                   I know
                         you
are international to the core.
But those with unclean hands
have often made a jingle of your purest name.
I know the goodness of my land.
How vile these anti-Semites-
                            without a qualm
they pompously called themselves
the Union of the Russian People!
I seem to be
            Anne Frank
transparent
           as a branch in April.
And I love.
          And have no need of phrases.
My need
       is that we gaze into each other.
How little we can see
                     or smell!
We are denied the leaves,
                         we are denied the sky.
Yet we can do so much --
                        tenderly
embrace each other in a darkened room.
They're coming here?
                    Be not afraid. Those are the booming
sounds of spring:
                 spring is coming here.
Come then to me.
               Quick, give me your lips.
Are they smashing down the door?
                                No, it's the ice breaking ...
The wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar.
The trees look ominous,
                      like judges.
Here all things scream silently,
                               and, baring my head,
slowly I feel myself
                    turning gray.
And I myself
            am one massive, soundless scream
above the thousand thousand buried here.
I am
     each old man
                 here shot dead.
I am
    every child
               here shot dead.
Nothing in me
             shall ever forget!
The "Internationale," let it
                            thunder
when the last anti-Semite on earth
is buried forever.
In my blood there is no Jewish blood.
In their callous rage, all anti-Semites
must hate me now as a Jew.
For that reason
                I am a true Russian!

I wish you were here, dear, I wish you were here.
I wish you sat on the sofa
and I sat near.
the handkerchief could be yours,
the tear could be mine, chin-bound.
Though it could be, of course,
the other way around.

I wish you were here, dear,
I wish you were here.
I wish we were in my car,
and you'd shift the gear.
we'd find ourselves elsewhere,
on an unknown shore.
Or else we'd repair
To where we've been before.

I wish you were here, dear,
I wish you were here.
I wish I knew no astronomy
when stars appear,
when the moon skims the water
that sighs and shifts in its slumber.
I wish it were still a quarter
to dial your number.

I wish you were here, dear,
in this hemisphere,
as I sit on the porch
sipping a beer.
It's evening, the sun is setting;
boys shout and gulls are crying.
What's the point of forgetting
If it's followed by dying?


Joseph Brodsky

About a year has passed. I've returned to the place of the battle,
to its birds that have learned their unfolding of wings
from a subtle
lift of a surprised eyebrow, or perhaps from a razor blade
- wings, now the shade of early twilight, now of state
bad blood.

Now the place is abuzz with trading
in your ankles's remnants, bronzes
of sunburnt breastplates, dying laughter, bruises,
rumors of fresh reserves, memories of high treason,
laundered banners with imprints of the many
who since have risen.

All's overgrown with people. A ruin's a rather stubborn
architectural style. And the hearts's distinction
from a pitch-black cavern
isn't that great; not great enough to fear
that we may collide again like blind eggs somewhere.

At sunrise, when nobody stares at one's face, I often,
set out on foot to a monument cast in molten
lengthy bad dreams. And it says on the plinth "commander
in chief." But it reads "in grief," or "in brief,"
or "in going under."



Joseph Brodsky

The stone-built villages of England.
A cathedral bottled in a pub window.
Cows dispersed across fields.
Monuments to kings.

A man in a moth-eaten suit
sees a train off, heading, like everything here, for the sea,
smiles at his daughter, leaving for the East.
A whistle blows.

And the endless sky over the tiles
grows bluer as swelling birdsong fills.
And the clearer the song is heard,
the smaller the bird.


*Joseph Brodsky

White snow, gray ice,
Upon the dry, cracked earth.
A quilt lies on top -
A city in the loop of the road.

Above the city, clouds float by,
Blocking the light of the skies.
Above the city, yellow smoke.
The city stands for two thousand years
Under the light of the star that we call the sun

For two thousand years there is war,
War for no particular cause.
War is in the hands of the young,
Medicine against wrinkled skin.

The blood, the red, red blood,
In an hour is simply earth,
In two it holds grass and flowers,
In three it is once more alive
And warmed by the rays of the star that we call the sun

And we know that it has always been so,
That those who are loved by fate
Are those who live by laws not our own,
Those who are doomed to die young

He can't remember the word "yes," the word "no,"
He can't remember the ranks or the names.
He is capable of reaching the stars,
Discounting that this is a dream
And fall down, singed by the star that we call the sun

Viktor Tsoi

A warm place
But the streets are waiting for the footprints of our feet
Stardust on our boots.
A soft armchair, checkered plaid,
A trigger not pulled in time.
A sunny day - in blinding dreams.

Blood type - on the sleeve
My serial number - on the sleeve,
Wish me luck in battle, wish for me
To not stay in this grass,
To not stay in this grass.
Wish me luck, wish me luck!

And there is enough to pay, but I don't want
Victory at any cost.
I don't want to put my leg on anyone's chest.
I would have liked to stay with you,
To just stay with you,
But the star high in the sky is calling me.

Blood type - on the sleeve
My serial number - on the sleeve,
Wish me luck in battle, wish for me
To not stay in this grass,
To not stay in this grass.
Wish me luck, wish me luck

Viktor Tsoi

My heart is on the pillow
I can not touch your hand.
And precious silence proud of you
My dark room have a band.

It is consist one guitar-bass,
One piano and my voice.
My silence voice, which cry with noise
And moon outside with choice.

M.B.


I threw my arms about those shoulders, glancing
at what emerged behind that back,
and saw a chair pusher slightly forward,
merging now with the lighted wall.
The lamp glared too bright to show
the shabby furniture to some advantage,
and that is why sofa of brown leather
shone a sort of yellow in a corner.
The table looked bare, the parquet glossy,
the stove quite dark, and in a dusty frame
a landscape did not stir. Only the sideboart
seemed to me to have some animation.
But a moth flitted round the room,
causing my arrested glance to shift;
and if at any time a ghost had lived here,
he now was gone, abandoning this house.

Joseph Brodsky

I breathe in wild
And candle break her mirror,
Her dark and strange
Unfading royal face

And kind of sky,
Which quickly disappear,
Merged with the night
And smelled of opened gap.

It isn't time to words.
It's time to hear birds.
To forest's noise and cry,
To yellow green which die,
Which run from our blind.
It's time to hidding sun
In clouds of it's mind,
In rare kind of eyes.
In secret raining's wild, is
it all our blame?

This time is to the shame.

Уехать, уехать, уехать,
Исчезнуть немедля, тотчас,
По мне, хоть навечно, по мне, хоть
В ничто, только скрыться бы с глаз,
Мне лишь бы не слышать, не видть,
Не знать никого, ничего,
Не мыслю живущих обидеть,
Но как здесь темно и мертво!
Иль попросту жить я устала -
И ждать, и любить не любя...
Все кончено. В мире не стало -
Подумай - не стало тебя.

13. 7. 64

Мария Петровых

This will make you love again.
The burning heart, the falling name.
Tatiana, it's the burning candle
On poet's crying, shining table.