A man greater than himself
A man greater than himself
What kind of crater did he end up in?
Here he is a pioneer persistent
dwells near a slum dump
Ivanov with the pseudonym Perpetusa,
not recognized by himself.
Here he is distant from the generic program,
expelling toxic particles from the lungs.
Here he is hanging out among his peers,
The suicidal longing of the city evangelists.
Here he was shaken off by the tsunami on duty
Somewhere on the Island of Love Lamentations,
Here it is wrapped up in another funnel,
Spun into the magical raven settlement…
A beautiful angel, utterly confused,
Immaculate, unsullied, corrupted,
The Holy Fool of the mysterious hierarchy,
A page from the book still unwritten.
The heavenly author knows about it in advance
And loves him even more in exile.
In the zones of the earth, in the deserts with thorns
A wanderer hangs around, untrained.
The lower it falls, the cleaner and better
He will rise up once, he will go mad four times,
Until he climbs the mysterious stairs.
The Loneliness poured out like a rash
The Loneliness poured out like a rash –
give me a cuddle, smile.
The soul is in a state of utter darkness,
Falls in love absolutely madly…
Loneliness, loneliness
I don’t want to live –
Extreme loneliness.
My head is confused,
Sly prison architecture –
Loneliness.
Why among mosques, temples and synagogues
Is a man so lonely?
And neither Christ nor Moses will set him free,
Nor Mohammed?
He’s always busy with something.
And random shadows scurry around the city,
They are ruled by an evil-taught genius,
And megalopolitan metamarphoses are taking place before our eyes
On the transformation of a person into a cigarette butt.
At night, a dark passion torments you,
Hurry up and get on the stove,
Don’t stick your head out – the dragon will bite it off, boy,
Sit quietly curled up in a ball.
Will it save you from the loneliness of the unbridled
The one-who-is-not, Christ or Buddha?
The music of the thought is erased before it is recorded
And on the site of yesterday’s party-night prostration.
Not getting through to the doctor in the medical isolation ward
The happiest people on earth are the demoniacs,
The madmen break through the average ghetto.
Loneliness is
The candles are extinguished and oppressive from the inside
This is mechanical gibberish,
The utter emptiness of dislike.
Break up, grey cloud
How chalk is erased from a blackboard,
Dust from bookcases and windows –
Wipe away the
thirst for perfect purity in the high realms.
Like a moth in a wardrobe –
Thoughts, daydreams,
My heart is swollen with scab –
sealed access
to a mysterious neighbor –
I can’t see him at close range,
open the windows and doors
of the spiritual heart.
Break up, grey cloud
Goat-legged lust.
Like a mountain stream in the castle of Christ –
purity,
144 enthusiastic caballeros –
Against the lustful chimera.
144 myrrh-bearing wives
They ascend to the castle of Eternal Virginity.
Bleached pearlescent bone
In the purified interior,
the candle is lit in the lungs
High meditations.
The mind is focused and closed,
In the sunny distances
Blissfully in castles in the air
The Holy Grail.
Yes here as if on the mother’s wing
This world is like a dirty toilet,
There’s an idol painted on the cubicle doors.
Don’t get through to anyone here,
Neither far nor near,
Desperate to read from the notes,
Flipping through other people’s ads
And sleepily staring at the TV
Complain about the idiocy and high cost.
Yes here as if on the mother’s wing –
He said he was gone.
In’yaza’s closet is painted to the last degree –
Leave to the nearest page by bringing it to you
With the entry: «I thirst… I confide, I wait;
See you at the Botanical Garden.»
How old pages were erased
And the paint came off the battered benches,
No one here dares to do anything –
Here, everyone shuns each other.
On indifferent and swollen faces
Longing for domestic division.
Well, who am I, well, who will I hold,
Desperate to read from the notes
And to the last, hope and wait.
On Sretenka medical insulator,
The bar owner is a petty usurper
And the candles don’t burn in the lungs,
It’s so cold at minus 50.
And as a transit unexpected departure,
Like a flight of stairs instead of an elevator –
Hope, enlightenment, and again
Hope for God knows what and wait.
The city chimeras make you obsessively sick,
I’m tired of «pretending»
And going through advertising forests
What you can and can’t do.
I don’t need sex or a casino
I’ve been sick of masks for a long time.
Burn the candle, never go out.
The bookshelves are dusty and empty.