Irina Mashinski
To the Border
Translated by Tony Brinkley and the author
For G.Kruzhkov
November, bride in a glass casket.
Seed spill
from the entrance-toward the light-outside!
A careful step-here, there-boot toe
touching cautiously
the mica of this brittle puddle.
Quiet! Approaching the border!
This border-in exquisite mist!
An elm-branch - that is so familiar! - hangs like a fruit-drop
the eyes' crystal breaks oblique light-rays
like spokes-
so like a glider-arms stretched out-across the convex
of the ironed surface of blank ice
the slow pedestrian plane slips cautiously,
clouds rush in under him
like children, and the border
closes, shallows
creased dove-blue.
Translated by the author
In Jugendstil.Braunau Am Inn*
A golden cloud
on baby Hitler's chest
Laced curtain
far away -
where that light is - bright
bulges
the world outside cambers and curves
towards the East -
Breeze - and the curtain
flies away, then suddenly steps in
leaning on the window sill
- like Mutter,
strokes unrippled blanket with her
scarlet satin palm.
Late April trembles on the
wallpaper, sweeps
to the door in one move
- like pictures in the magic lantern -
its greenish patterns.
Sleep! little sheep
sing their quiet Donna, donna
look how they amble
down. Sleep,
Klimt shines in gilded windows,
and Beardsley's railing
snakes and meanders on
balconies,
Evil
shows through the golden gaps
of Good,
and healthy evening Sun
plays like a radio
spinning
its wired waltzes.
Like a Year Ago. Niantic Bay
Boris Ryzhyj, a Russian poet from the Ural town of Yekaterininburg, committed suicide in 2001 at the age of 27. Ryzhyj in Russian means red-haired; in provincial slang - substitutes for gold (or false gold).
The name of an Indian river,
this salty mouth,
this bridge at night:
trembling lights,
a chain of false gold
on the youth's neck
in a hopeless provincial town
in Russia. In the morning, the bridge is invisible.
Lights are off.
Last year at this time, on the other
side of the sound
Marina was dying, and only a fall
remained for Sasha.
Dawn, high tide
moving inland;
the quiet grove comes right to the water,
touches it with a toe.
Dawn, alone in the house not mine, I dream air,
light
from the windows thrown open,
the empty outskirts of a Russian
town N,
a line of a poem -
line just uttered
no one's.
Love
...counts her beads of trifles, slips of tongue, quick glances, having tortured millions of crumpled petals, anguishing from encounters, for one year watching from the four corners, having not uttered even two words...
The Discovery
He returned from the backyard
and went back to bed,
his feet still cold
from the night grass.
Lighter than the room,
than the sheets,
was the narrow
slit between the curtains,
and my hand
blind with pity,
flew up,
light, uncertain -
reaching for
the dark-haired head
that still smelled of tobacco