Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Still Life

Verra la morte e avra i tuoi occhi.
( Death will come and it will look with your eyes. )
Cesare Pavese


1

Things and humans
surround us.  Both
torture the eye.
Better to live in darkness.

I am on a bench
in the park, following with my eyes
a family passing by.
I am fed up with light.

It is January – winter,
according to the calendar.
When I am fed up with darkness,
then I shall speak.

2

It is time now.  I am ready to begin.
No matter with what.  To open
my mouth.  I can be silent.
But it’s better that I speak.

What about?  Of days and nights.
Or rather of nothing.
Or about things.
About things – 

not about people.  They will die.
All of them.  I will die too.
This is futile,
like pissing against the wind.

3

My blood is cold.
Its coldness is colder
than a river frozen in its bed.
I do not like people.

I do not like their looks.
Their faces impart 
some unforsakable
look.

Something in their faces
is disgusting to the mind.
Is flattering
who knows whom.

4

Things are more pleasant. They
mean neither good nor harm,
on the face of it. But if you probe
into them – into their innards – 

objects are dust inside.
Ashes.  A woodboring beetle.
Walls.  A dried bloodworm.
Unpleasant for your hands.

Dust.  Turn on the light  
and it will shine on only dust.
Even if the object 
is sealed tight.

5

An old cupboard looks
the same inside and out,
reminding me
of Notre-Dame de Paris.

The cupboard’s entrails are dark.
A mop, a rag
will not wipe off dust.
A thing itself is generally dust

that does not strive to overcome,
that does not raise the brow.
Because dust is the flesh
of time; it is flesh and blood.

6

Lately I’ve begun
to sleep in the daytime.
It seems my death
puts me to the test,

holding a mirror to my mouth
even if I breathe,
to see how I withstand
non-existence in the daylight.

I am immobile.  My two
thighs are as cold as ice.
Their venous blue flesh
looks like marble.

7

Surprising us
with the sum of its angles,
the thing stands out
from the common ways of words.

The thing is not at a standstill.  And
it does not move.  It is a delusion.
A thing is a space, outside of which
there isn’t a thing.

A thing can be banged down, burned,
eviscerated, broken.
Dropped. The thing
will not exclaim: ”What the fuck?!”

8

A tree.  Shade.  Dirt
under the tree for the roots.
Knotty monograms.
Clay.  A pile of rocks.

Roots.  Their entanglement.
A rock whose personal weight
liberates it from
the nexus of knots.

It is immobile.  It cannot be
moved or taken away.
Its shadow.  A man in its shade
is like a fish in the net.

9

A thing. The brown color
of the thing. Whose outlines are blurred.
Dusk.  No more
anything.  A still life.

Death will come and find
a body whose smoothness
will reflect death’s visit like
the coming of a woman.

It is absurd, a lie:
a skull, a skeleton, a scythe.
‘Death will come, and it
will look with your eyes.’

10

Says the mother to Christ:
Are you my son or my 
God?  You are nailed to the cross.
How can I go home?

How can I step over the sill
if I can’t understand or decide
whether you are my son or God?
That is, are you dead or alive?

He says in response:
“Dead or alive -
it doesn’t matter, woman.
Whether I am your son or God, I am yours.”

by Joseph Brodsky
Translated from the Russian by Leonid Gornik



The Vorona River frozen in its bed
Winter in Borisoglebsk
Oil painting by Alexey Bogolyubov
from Wikimedia Commons





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