III.

A man has one body,
so solitary.
The soul is sick
of this solid sheath
with ears and eyes
the size of buttons
and skin, a mass of scars,
a skeleton's robe.
Fly through the cornea
to the heavenly spring
to the icy spoke,
to the bird's chariot.
Through its prison bars it hears
the clamor of woods and leas,
the trumpet of the seas.
A soul without a body
is like a body without a shirt.
Not a thought for a deed,
not a line or a concept.
A riddle that has no answer:
Who'll return to dance
where there's no one to dance?
I dream of another soul,
dressed in other garb.
I flits from doubt to hope,
burning without a shadow
like alcohol,
and slips away
leaving a memento:
Some lilac on the table
child, fret not
over poor Eurydice
but drive your copper hoop
through life
while in response to every step
you hear the Earth reply.
Merry is its voice, and dry.

II.

I trust not premonitions
and I fear not omens.
I flee not from slander or poison.
There is no death.
We're all immortal.
All is immortal.
Fear not death at seventeen
nor at seventy.
There's only reality and light.
There's neither dark nor death
in this, our world.
We've reached the beach
and I am one of those who pull the nets in
when immortality arrives in batches.
Live in a house and it won't crumble.
I'll summon a century at will
enter and build my house in it.
That's why your children and your wives
all share my board
the table serving forefather and grandson.
The future is decided now.
And if I raise my hand
the five rays will remain to you.
My bones, like beams
held up each day.
I measured time with a surveyor's staff,
and passed through it as though the mountains.
I chose a century
according to my height.
We pressed on south,
raising dust in the steppes.
Weeds smoldered, a grasshopper played
touching horseshoes and prophesying
threatening me with death
quite like a monk.
I strapped my fate fast to my saddle
I rise up in the stirrups of the future as a boy.
I am content
with my immortality
with my blood coursing
from century to century.
I'd gladly give my life
for a safe corner of warmth
if life's swift needle
did not draw me on
as though I were a thread.

Three verses

The following are 3 verses recited in Andrei Tarkovsky's film "The mirror". These poems are by his father Arseny Tarkovsky, Russia's prominent poet and translator.

I.
We celebrate each moment
of our meetings a revelation
alone in all the world.
You were lighter and bolder
than the wing of a bird
flying down the stairs two at a time
pure giddiness,
leading me through moist lilac
to your domain beyond the looking glass.
When night fell
I was favored.
The alter gates were opened
and in the dark there gleamed
your nudity, and I slowly bowed.
Awakening, "Be blessed", I said
and knew my blessing to be bold
for you still slept.
The lilac on the table stretched forth
to touch your lids with heavenly blue
and your blue-tinted lids
were calm, and your hand was warm.
Locked in crystal, rivers pulsed
mountains smoked,
seas glimmered.
You held a sphere of crystal
in your hand and slept on a throne.
And-- righteous Lord!--
you were mine.
You awakened and transformed.
our mundane, human words.
Then did my throat fill with new power
and give new meaning to "you"
which now meant "sovereign"
All was transformed
even such simple things
as basin, pitcher
when, like a sentinel,
layered, solid water
lay between us.
We were drawn on and on
were cities build by magic
parted before us like mirages.
Mint carpeted our way
birds escorted us
and fish swam upstream
while the sky spread out before us
as Fate followed in our wake
like a madman brandishing a razor.

The problem with Memory

Never wore a locket with a face smiling wide,
caged inside
scrap books and diaries were just too easy
reach out and open it, senseless and dead
I wouldn't dare to smell the decomposing past,
on the pages after pages of tacky colorful papers.
pictures were taken once in a while,
just to see how things couldn't get anymore perfect
how there might never be a repeat,
no chance of duplication
and the next time I would look at it,
it could be in an imperfect moment
just far enough to be called past.
and how strange it was,
when I come to realize
that the less I asked for remembrance
and the less I collected, it was all the more.
I was remembering so out of control
randomly but constantly
sometimes bringing back sweet tastes,
smells were the best, in the middle of that kitchen
the dry air and mustard yellow tiles,
of the childhood house.
Then in the same random manner
it turned into those hurtful ones.
How I didn't asked for it all,
whatever was done, what was not done
it had to become a melancholy of a passive mind
a vintage piece,
unwanted,
insisting on its cruel existence.

Necessities Only!

Desired to see,
when dared to look, it just wasn't there.
Reaching out, fingers freezed
swallowing it down, that warmth of the numbing liquid.
didn't care to hear
sobbings of self-declared tragics, unaware destructive
and of course, kind words of insecures, raising trust.
spinning, swallowing some more,
and there it is, in the overlighted bathroom mirror, staring back
is a face of an unfinished decision
a discontinued politician
that modestly suppressed once:
"Necessities only!"
so, unnecessities were placed carefully
inside that still-unpacked suitcase
next to the favorite jeans and clean underwears...
never to be mentioned again unless they were cleverly humiliated and denied.
"How dare they belong?"
Necessities Only!

Wonderment!

Just another epic cycle!

It went blurry again...
while I was staring at it indifferently
After all it wasn't like some kind of bright light at the end of some dark tunnel to begin with...
it had always been there, as long as I can remember
sometimes scattered, the way tiny bits of dust are, floating in the air, when broken by sunlight...
but then it always looked sickeningly the same.
So I shifted many times, meaning to become solid, to hold on
and every time, there came an absolute stillness afterwards
looking ahead, it stopped with me, possibly waiting for me to catch up
possibly just desiring to fade away right there.
consequences of stillness, are just not so simple.
the useless being of anything that's ahead
sometimes blurry, sometimes not
it slowly made my eyelids heavy... it went dark under closed eyes, so much brighter!
Soon I had to open them, soon I had to start moving,
but I would be tired again,
and soon I wouldn't be able to justify my exhausted self.
whatever is ahead of me,
Is laughing at loud.

Undivided

The way you remember it, never actually happened.
the traces left behind, the emptiness you feel just looking back at it,
is not really there.
Shadow of a person you thought you saw once
so fragile and black, maybe carefully getting closer,
maybe touching the surface with cold fingers
maybe poking too far
for there was a sensation you never knew existed
maybe an old cliche!
for good or bad, it disappeared, gone... fucked.
so you touched your skin all over, searching urgently for the left marks of his fingers
the shadow's.
dried skin untouched
logic deceived
It never happened.
The shadow might have been a real shadow
a tree perhaps,
just standing there in the far distance
You've been denied by only a shadow of something unknown.
In a half lit world, weary and sore
frightened to see
the truth from fiction.

So it begins...

There,
between the slowly fading presences,
goes around, the very crippled sequence of events,
from which, one dies in the process of a fictional birth,
thrown out of existence...

what comes next is only an erroneous perception of a sweet, disturbed childhood
the scripted moments of revelations, illuminations, darkness...
from the delusion of traumas, staged breakdowns.
What comes out, are perfectly shaped bodies
prefacing, without recognizing the astonishment that
leaves behind.
and of course it is only thought to be heard
mumbled words, unconscious head
the birth effect carried out through
then forcefully learned behaviors started to kick in,
the pretentious curving ups on the corners of the lips,
for which talks were regarded by.

so they faded out, in complete consciousness
this time naked and blank, fairly real
this time out of wound.