Alexey Porvin
Translated by J. Kates
On the smooth surface of the night gleaming like a turnstile, the sudden slot of a sunrise requires some payment from you. You want to pass, and you drop an uneasy token into the interior of the mechanism that holds up any movement through here. The machinery lets passersby through to open space, which can take loving possession of those minds who have paid their own way nor will you even recall the restless little circle from your pocket, soul, because there is far less profit in constricted passageways. * * * A fly is humming among the stalks a sound not recorded in the dictionary of a weary garden: an encumbrance to be shooed away - well able to take care of itself, to shy away from reprisal. Smidgen, be off into God's own world - Now I'm free of your retribution. Stop your humming and quiet down behind the river, behind rain deaf to the noise of water under what's left of shade. Drops on leaves - every word there is; their liberty - a look upwards remembering the fall of light onto the shroud of a wing, into an incessant unecessary buzz by which we forget - that's all. * * * Where light slipped in between the symbols of a letter, becoming a slight breeze, that's where a falling sheet of paper is caught up and tossed high. It contains no single intention, but there is one driven to music by your hands as they press the keys of a piano - and the sound lingers. He is alive under your fingers, and you, don't let up -keep on, keep on - until the sounds in the wooden box subside at last. But, even then, hearing has learned to prolong the very last sound in which everything that is read as music will blend into indivisible light. Second Imitation of Americans From the dwellings of man warm smoke, sharp every prickle on the blackthorn. The letter creates a stable cross-bar of the mailbox it hangs on. Coffee boils over, percolating things: Be quiet and don't take a stand. Door, do something, act quickly, midnight is coming to an end. Books, drinking glasses, knives, keys came together on the towering hill and speak - we can not see the slow-moving flame. As soon as it reaches us, we're finished. Let this be the climactic end. We're already returning to our own home - to serve humankind.