...For attention is a kind of field of rambling mathematical dots;
they ramble all over the body, emotions, feelings, and thoughts;
the dots, having rambled away, come back with a certain catch;
attention is a coveted prize for various centers of force;
robust frontal lobes are required for good attention control;
too rarified an attention will make you a gullible fool,
and overmuch concentration will make you an idiot, too;
the line between folly and idiocy isn't so clear-cut;
Divine assembles the dots into a congruous kaleidoscope;
Divine alone sends them flying into a congruous kaleidoscope;
one humbly offers attention to Him for this very end;
this yields more beatification than slaughtering a buffalo herd;
the sacrifice of attention is better than donating to church;
attention, may have to do with skittish bosons of Higgs;
controlling and refining attention is a primary duty of man;
relaxing attention in Her is by far the greatest of joys.
And now, you can attend to your half-eaten Buffalo wings.

To the one-time maxim "to not hurt"
I added "unfairly" after a short
consideration.
I guess it's a sign of maturation.

So if, incidentally, you've been
hurting irresponsibly – you better think
about precision,
it's time for grown-up decisions

like starting hurting fairly, thoughtfully, gracefully.

While the flight attendant,
having loaded the meal cart,
is monotonously, monotonously pitching,

the Christian God
steers
every
streetcar,
prescribes
every
Christian
(that applies to non-Christians alike),

so that one is pressed down with a mound of hardships,
while another is blessed and basks in prescriptions,
аминь /ah-MEEN/.

Meanwhile, children and all clear of dross,
enter heaven bypassing the thorns,
and Peter, the staunchest of Capricorns,
beckons them in.

While I'm being skeptical
of the attendant's offerings,
other passengers engrossed in the drama,

God, as He is,  
palms off beings to the workings of karma,
albeit also—****!—asymmetrical...

Today—just today—inasmuch as
my whimsical desire is concerned,
accepting gifts and souvenirs such as:
maple leaves, breath of moose (I've learned

it's kind of good for being Canada-sick),
honey crullers or, for that matter,
a double-double. You've got to have a lick
of ice cream at... oh, I don't remember,

I forgot the name, just know that Bloor
is gracefully crossed there by Spadina;
and don't misjudge me as a boor,
but promptly ship it all to China.

Make sure to toss on top of that
iridescent vapor from Niagara;
it's not like I feel sad or mad,
but things will definitely shine gladder.

Breath of moose can go in balloons,
and vapor too can be encapsulated;
and after many Chinese moons
my birthday will get canadated.

It is common knowledge in village Woop-Woop:  
Gnyaneshwar penned "Gnyaneshwari" in one fell swoop,
but later on, after drinking some coconut juice,
he jetted off into mahasamadhi* —whooz!

As a tractor operator from the very place  
equated mahasamadhi to returning—with grace—
one's worn-out ticket to Heavenly Lord,
his face was gilded by last twilight rays.

Mid-supper, the milkmaids from the very hickst  
included "Gnyaneshwari" into Brodsky's List,  
though Brodsky didn't stop his resting in peace,
for he'd grown tired of exhorting lay-deez,

provided that their choice wasn't that bad.
Gnyaneshwar had penned "Gnyaneshwari,"—poor lad!
He had a hard time bringing it home to folks
who had a penchant for not connecting the dots.      

About the said Gnyaneshwar—if only he knew
that in less than a millennium, a random dude
would quote "Gnyaneshwari" in one fell sway—
otherwise, he'd have surely whispered: "I stay."

*mahasamadhi can be viewed as a non-violent suicide

~Alexander Blok

Let Me stay at heights most lofty,
I'm spotless, I'm complete.
The shore is dark and looks so lonely
whilst ships are furrowing the sea.

Sometimes, a sail' close aboard,
it sparks a dream in Me at once.
And in the endless vast, behold
my Soul's extravagance.

It feels so solitary, stilly,
and I am at the steering wheel,
and I am crooning — don't you hear it? —
your dream, my beloved keel.

Trust your sail to the tempest,
churning strangers' fate, not yours:
and in My azure calm expanses
I'll mourn your twists and turns.

A musician
was playing a piece
and got carried away.

Those listening to his music
were also carried away.

If all got carried away,
who stayed?

If you're a mathematician,
you run the risk
of being carried away

without a solution

There's a gap, oh yeah, there's a gap
between you             and              me.
There's a bridge, oh yeah, there's a bridge
between me and you. Sounds like rap.
So far, in what I've said there's nothing sinuous
'cause I'm using very simple language,
not some future perfect progressive,
nor some future perfect continuous.

This gap, this nasty, nasty gap
between you             and             me,
is just the same that cuts off you
from You and me—from Me. Ah, snap!
But here's the deal: while inhibiting
your reptilian brain, you want to clean
your human brain of all the crap,
and if God wills,
you reach a kind of present infinitive.

~ Daniil Andreev

The predawn breeze caresses eternally sacred stones.
The muezzin raises his hands, ready to chant the adhan
over somber Galilee, where time quietly flows
through Cana's and Bethlehem's ashes. He calls: "Allah-il-Allah".

Like a rose mirage, Damascus groves and temples
will shimmer. Chador-clad women bead gems, never in rush.
The breeze blows now and then, and waves gently bring their favors;
the summoning trumpets of Angel, Lion, and Eagle are hushed.

Yet, fishing nets remain wistful, just as when the Lamb was slain;
the Crusaders' coffins slumber, steeped in cedar and myrrh.
And crowds of motley supplicants time and time again
will scurry to His Sepulcher from different ends of the earth.

This Earth is home
to eight billion visionaries.
Their revelations begin
with a baby's first cry,
and then their missions unfold,
each
their own messiah.

At times, prophecies concur,
forming fleeting alliances:
where no one sows salt,
mushroom colonies strike—
each member with its stem,
a cocked tricorn hat,
and live performances.
"Now my turn—gimme the mike!"

Every oracle's merit
is gauged by impartial Something
beyond face,
beyond sounding.

You'd think he came to the shore to watch a ginger-haired dog,
sprawled like a wrung-out towel left by a beachgoer in haste,
staring into horizon blurred by thickening fog,
hearing repetitive lament of rocks being ground by waves?

No. His reason for coming was as blatant as that
of a tough who says he picks fights, because he just likes to fight.
That the doggy was gingering the monochrome of the sand  
is far from being the point. Simply put, never mind.    

The point is this: he just needed a cubic meter of air
to sniff in many a molecule from the arbitrary cube.
Chiefly, he craved those of oxygen, and, just to be fair,
the dog was oxygenating its blood circuitry, too.

But that was just the beginning—he wondered what would come next,
when his aerial chalice drained itself to the lees:
he'd heard of the airless void as a bottomless nest
of other provisional "particles", quote, unquote, and as is.

Yet, if only those quanta could trickle down his throat,
the ladles still poured out some extra, like a hearty gravity's soup.
And after, they lavishly offered some time and space for dessert.
Was that the end of all? Bite it! It was an infinite loop.

I can't really say where exactly all that infinity ceased,
but, all of a sudden, an impulse emerged in him, picking its way—
through all his quarks—to pet the ginger-coated beast,
which sensed it through all its quanta, its tail thumping the gray

sand of the beach.

~ Joseph Brodsky

Stars hadn't gone dark yet.
Stars were where they belonged in,
when roosters were waking up and
shouting throaty songs in
the hennery, perched ceremoniously.
...The silence died out,
just like cathedral's quiet
does with the first choral sound,
echoing gloriously.

Having abandoned warm blankets,
grouchy and half-sleeping,
plowmen harnessed their cattle.
It was in the beginning.
The day broke as though a new egg,
revealing the orange yolk, meaning
the sun was rising; a duet
of skylarks
must have been singing.

Roosters usually fancied
grains of pearls over millet,
with their roostery senses
they searched for them here and there  
dunking into the dung. Yet,
grains were there to reclaim,
grains were there to extract, and,
at sunrise, they would proclaim:    
"We've found them all by ourselves
and husked them with a great artfulness.
So we’re boasting to everyone else          
about this fortune of ours."

In this throaty chime,
performed for eons,
repeatedly,
I see the fabric of time,
discovered by roosters unwittingly.

In a restaurant
he was studying the menu:

~ Raw emotion with blood
~ Medium-rare emotion
~ Stir-fried emotion
~ Deep-fried emotion

Emotions, refined with thought,
had to be preordered
years in advance

in a separate annex.

Swish, swish. Street-sweepers go in lock-
step, though each has their own biological clock;
each uniquely wields their pulsating brooms, though
someone would claim all are woken by roosters.

Street-sweepers will teach you how to smash
the truth that cleanliness is the absence of trash.
They'll prove it with their own swishing and capture,
including the truth's shards geometrizing the texture

of the insides of their bottomless garbage bags.
There underneath, as abysmally as it gets, 
you'll find even more of those shards, that's without
all sorts of filth
flattened out. 

You'll never see street-sweepers hurry or fuss;
they carry themselves with such dignity and class,
while you tighten the fat of your desk-jokey belly,
when your grumpy superior
wants to turn you to jelly.

Mom wants her child to make it through school,
then jump to college — all to grow the pool
of lawyers, managers, marketers, psycholo-
gists, that is, experts in the eternal soul. Oh,
 
she has no issue with this dream at all,
so long as her child will stand fair and tall;
she would never want to see them street-sweeping,
including the shards of her dreams and tears of her weeping.

Yet, life arranges roles, issuing a decree,
who will tighten their fat, and who is to steer
the truth with their very hands, sweeping in style,
and be celebrated in verse
or maybe
in prose.

Thank God,
men are not the sole vessels
of Masculinity.

Thank Goddess,
women are not the sole vases
of Femininity.

Thank Christ,
children are not the sole embassadors
of the Eternal Child.

Thus, creation can be reinstated
by the Trinity.

2021

~ Vladimir Burich

Where to keep the treasure?

Over the bed,
in full view of a casual partner?
Under the tomb
desecrated with **** swastikas?
Inside the book
that will be found and opened,
with his pure hands,
by a masturbator?
In the soul,
right beside wounds?

Where,
where to keep the treasure?

You just grip it
and walk
without opening the fist.

To my left, old women huddle
by the roadside, thinning lives.
They're upholding one another,
so all will check with lightsome spines

at the cemetery's receiving desk,
then melt away in turquoise bliss.
I wish to think what waits is rest,
not stewing in beetroot abyss.

To my right, kids comet by,
and through them—life's current raw.
I wish to think the Tree of Life
will graft each in its midmost core.

How I wish
the innocent
were never wronged...