Dennis Novikov
In Memoriam Dennis Novikov (1967-2004)
Translated by Philip Nikolayev
Nursery Rhyme
At the twentieth century's close I behold the beast in man and in woman the nonhuman, as if leafing through prints of Bosch. These ruthless optics of the mad, eyes sad and ice-cold still, you were afraid to try on, coward. Now look: you too are ill. * * * Beating the strings in a junior euphoria, the building's yard sang songs of fate and love, sending out emissaries, half of them nicknamed Kuzya - Kuzmin, Kuzmenko or, more typically, Kuznetsov. From the store, the fine emissary brought wine, carmine Agdam and other purple port. This is not Anna, it's Oxana: save this lesson in your head for life, young Kuznetsov. The soldier'll come back from Afghanistan, everything will soon be all right again, kind of. No, it will be as always: standard, everyman, yet with the difference that this is Kuznestov. * * * Let's go, let's take the shortest route, I know a shortcut here, to get some bread, smokes, beer, fruit soup, what not. And on the way we'll share our life stories, naming within that frame bright guardian angels of our strife with opaque demons of our shame. Let's hear the festive ocarina sing, weep and perish, too-doo-loo, no, not for a line of cocaine, nor for a pint of heady brew. It sings, fixed with a chain of metal to a high hopeful reverie, dilating like a burning prairie within the widely narrowed pupil. Let's go. We've never been. The basket of years floats by like numbered dreams churned by Vlad Lenin's damaged brains inside his labradorite casket. Dark clouds remain God's secret lodge, and in Red Square the earth's become a wall by oneiric logic and all completely dark with time. Let's go then, us, let's take the shortcut, following the expiring sunrays, our intellectual walk amusement for the patrols of mounted sailors. * * * Rain will pour from ledges, shake its rattle, bringing recollections in the fall. I'm like rain, I challenge ferrous metal. When I pass you will recall. Rain will drum its head against the pavement (wrench tears out of stones, if you insist). I'm like rain, an evanescent element, yet it's thanks to me that you exist. * * * Can you hear the birds calling, not singing, at break of dawn? January snowfall will not let them sing, permit withdrawn. Jackdaws and crows and some stranger among them on the run, humanly watchful above me, all those feathers in snows. * * * i shall not break this silence siesta dead and deep may thus your sons the finest enjoy their final sleep come poetry bring by request each son a colored dream aim slightly higher to the left make sure to hit us clean