Felix Chechik
Translated by Philip Nikolayev
To a Classmate
I'll make out of blotter paper a MIG-27 fighter bomber and land it by the blackboard to make Natasha less bored. While the math teacher in anger writes her critical comment, soar, my plane, bright white angel: there is only the moment! * * * The sea extends as far as but not past the horizon: no one knows what it hides in that far-from-the-eye zone. But why care to know when you can instead, you know, man, stretch out on the beach like a jellyfish? Watch those wild waves bare their sharp white teeth at the cool dark caves and indifferent cliffs. * * * Seeing how there's only loss and grief, no walls, no roof, only windows, doors, to finally dare leave in mid-show, just up and go puff into thin air.
The Butterfly
1. Whether by God's grace or by some other, perch for a moment, no more, upon my shoulder, turn into a tattoo of vulnerable hue, like this very life, too, which is as brief as you. 2. Here - you hear, butterfly? - is a mere butterfly, yet the tongue stutters and the heart flutters. Is this a butterfly or the shadow of one? The scar lasts a long time before it's gone. * * * I'll strain the creek with a dragnet, bow to armillarias in a forest, but back in the city I vote for salami. Pike come galore in spawning rage and armillarias sprout apace... Alas, someone tore out a page at the most interesting place. * * * That wild-growing moss refused, meaning no harm, to grow on the veggie farm because, well, it could not. It felt as if locked up under a blood-red sky, trapped in melancholy between carrot and turnip. Good grief, what have you done, oh worthless botanist! Far from aspen and pine, it'll perish like the Titanic! The dog bites its fleas and softly whimpers at you. Wild-growing moss completes the Moscow suburb dacha.