Mikhail Aizenberg
Translated by J. Kates
A light breeze on the cheek, no, a tiny moth has come awake, and flies like a negligible feather reminding me of something about you. It scribbled, outlined something in a dim visual movement, A lightscript nearly imperceptible beyond a pallid platinum glimmer. A pale, quivering trifle still irresistible in the soundless darkness. Because of it, the dark is not endless Indeed, nearly welcoming - thank you. * * * So secret mechanisms show through Near the bones at the corner of the cheek Forces erupted like blistering sores, Or my whole life might never know what's in me. A crop failure there. A battle for oxygen, Rivers choked with silt. Wild animals Find the bank, a ford, by their own trails, And climb down to the waterhole. In the depth a beast Whimpers for its own kind, The bird inside regrets its fledglings, Wolves in pairs Sleep in their lairs, The children have no mother or father. A wolf looks around: who's king of beasts here? By instinct he raises his hackles. * * * Children, where are you? The children are out somewhere camping, The children are hitchhiking Along trails made by animals. Maybe not that far away. We're wild men. Our legs are dappled. Our snouts black. The children have grown up among us, But not yet been fully initiated. Their faces are simple, their eyes insipid. Strange to them the tablets of our laws with half understood names If only one of us hadn't met them Along the road. Better a swineherd-king with his pigs. Better crows, martins, and magpies. A lizard in the sun. * * * Light rain falls as quietly as the footfall of an Indian guide. Nettles here, buckwheat there. Who tends these? Not I, the mushroom-gatherer. A cloud of spruce needles, scales from a dragon, but I see nothing, not I. I hear nothing, not I. I only hear, softer than a breath, the wind blowing over me, an alder-elder rustles distantly beyond the stillness. From the level pale blue sky from a corner not so far away an arrow has been fashioned destined for anything alive. Who will escape its barely perceptible flight? See how the invisible bird sings like a bowstring.