1.Prelude

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I walk along a festive street

Amidst the city noise and flare

And for the crowds that I meet

I celebrate I do not care

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And nothing bothers me as I

Walk by and listen to the glee

The clown shows catch my eye

But they don’t mean too much to me

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And through the babble, dapple and fun

And urban smells and loud hurray

I feel the breathing of the sun

That sheds itself onto my way

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2.  * * * 

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The threshold of the war:

Transparent imprecation

Over the sails; and horses’ helpless call

And its reverberation

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And you can hear banners’ murmur

And itty-bitty bridges’ rattle

And take in the gunpowder odour

And cannon philharmonic brattle

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Relying on His will in secret

Immortal nature’s love is real

It outruns the slow time

It plays with stars and spins the magic wheel

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3.Landscape

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A soft but piercing morning ray

Is pervading garden. And the solemn shade

Of stillness is so deep. And shyly

The sun is rising.

 

 

4. Mazeppa

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Appear as a sightless dream, and God will be your judge

In a kaleidoscope of rhymes and gossips,

Bridges, and hypocrites, and other beasts,

People and birds and vivifying vessels,

Refulgent summits and wild horses

Rushing to the glorified brethren -

Winds, singing in a headboard of days,

And whispering by their handshake.

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Appear as a sightless dream, and God will be your judge,

Through chains of words and disagreements,

Losing letters in the self-description

And punctuation marks. More dangerously

Is to do not live at all and to use the afternoon – 

Protection against horseshoes and glorifications –

With its categorical fire

Depriving unnecessary prefaces.

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Appear as a sightless dream, and God – your Judge

Among shrill and vowel endings

Among rainy and mysterious soundings

Among the bell-ringing terrestrial life.

... I wouldn’t sing by my soul, and wouldn’t write verses,

Wouldn’t  suffer from the punishments of numbers.

Only would hide myself behind the fall of words,

That have sometime ennoble me.

 

 

5. Feux follets

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The life is short and effortless

It is the science of the silence

It is delightsome irksomeness

Of glancing from some distant highness

Whether I wake or laugh or sing

Of so beloved and so impressing

I treasure each and every thing

And call them all my truly blessing

But truth is that another dream

That draws us all aside in vain

Reminds that beauty that’s supreme

Only resides within its reign.

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6. “Vision"

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For noise of things and magnificent words,

And the fluency of earth's rotation

The master is ready to give, with a smile,

A transformation miracle

Don't wait for miracles from the savage

And the capricious pusher,

All rituals having created,

Joking thumbing through books;

Or from the innocent blind man

That, drag a foot,

Waits for an admired mot,

In his self having noticed the touchy person;

And from the one who flaunts

Flashes in an eye of the lens,

Bashfully glowing to order

And being cooled haughtily.

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.. Not everyone is glad to be deceived,

To whom world signs are new -

He accepts this parade,

Eyes having blinked unwillingly.

Also knows when to stop all miracles

And in them exulting belief,

To address to heavens

Listening to a silent tune.

 

 

7. Heroica

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The day was like a movie that had already begun

That’s as familiar as a wedding ring finger

It curls according to the screenplay

And changes its skin every minute

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It’s not scary to recognize it every day

Watching the striped plough land

It’s quite politically correct to put up with it

It’s most effective to tinker with it.

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Tightly girt with heaven

Crowned with time zones

You pay with tingling minutes

Constraining human riot

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You’re unaware of the tragedy of stillness

You’re tortured by midday heat

And you slowly move your tired shoulders

And eyes.

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8. The wild hunting

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Travelling at night with street bums and other fellows

I am strolling from nowhere

Between the black boundaries and granite villages, between seems

And all pervasive rats.

I am finishing my crappy dinner, or lunch, or supper

Folding the dishes

I am struggling out of my chest thinking up I’ve been locked there

By some voodoo.

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Walking endlessly – is it dream or awake, reechoing

Between these ones only;

Reflection of life and the law of things, and the habit

Of wandering among them.

For Music is the word and the light, like the crazy concern

Burdening my shoulders

And I am torn by wild longing for life

With all its trivia.

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9. Remembrance

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Here’s another winter.

Calling back the memories of a sequence of past winters.

Quiet and sovereign.

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It comes back again

And arouses waves of tenderness to it.

Very strange.

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I see the snow.

My heart is torn by a sea of thoughts and tears,

And my speech is scrappy.

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It hurts.

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10. Wanderer

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I have no friends and no girlfriends

I have no blind impression

I have no brilliant attempts

To accept the updating nature

There is no shrill dream

Joints crackling severely

To rush faster than vanities

Whispering a saving word.

I am the salt of the earth and God’s gift

the justification of science

heat of faultless thoughts

In the world of not-evil-minded boredom.

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11. ”Evening harmonies"

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Familiar aroma of appreciable years,

That is with memory in casual friends,

Brings light of extraordinary names -

Treasured human signs.

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It is a nature’s mirror, no doubt -

Or grace and ancient heroes

Shrined its children's rooms,

Or it has been warmed by the Foresight.

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...Don't listen to anybody's slander,

Just let it move its side,

And laps a joyful wave of

Times’ astronomical greeting.

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12. "Blizzard"

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My Phoenix, my close blizzard,

Sparkling in one thousand appearances,

Calling in a crystal pipe,

Shining in a mirror of distinctions -

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You cry, and sings my marrow -

The core of sky moved apart;

You think, and thaws, as if a wax,

Snow-covered world's half;

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You rejoice to the first ray

Of rather short day interval -

And I already twirl a paper,

Describing obligations of a mind.

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2006-2007

© Asiya Korepanova.