It seems so far from whence it came, its two
inscriptions barely made out by the eye
at night — a vague sign on an avenue,
hanging above the heads of passersby.

Yet still it sails towards my window pane,
brushing snow for luck, a letter sent,
though, without any memory retained
of what it does or doesn’t represent.

Who is aboard ?  Tell me, or please explain.
What lies behind the words Fresh Bread, like freight
that hints it’s time for light to come again ?
(Sunrise the pretext/union worth the wait.)

You who direct my words towards warm light,
you are both very masterful and holy,
breaking the back of this cold winter night
and this code ( but not with the letter’s body).

Translated from the Russian by Leo Yankevich.

00 – 00
In a black-walled museum a painting conceived.  Its flowers grow with subtitles
for those who don’t believe in Kandinsky’s botany.

01 – 00
The half – moon is growing towards Quiet.  As if leaving a house where its human
roommates are drilling upwards.

02 – 00
The lunar eclipse that no one noticed is offended.  Quietly spiteful, it is doing
what the gingerbread house might have done if had gone unnoticed by a fat,
glutted and unlovely Hansel and Gretel.

03 – 00
The trunk of a small palm tree is an empty Kinder – Surprise that someone forgot
to put the scruffy little figure into.  The figure, meanwhile, is in the place where
future children’s hands are just beginning to grow out.

04 – 00
Umbrellas are dripping wheelchairs with survivor – raindrops, the damp
participants of the Fall Paralympics.

05 – 00
A bit of crumpled light turns up in the communal basket.  Here among these
paper odds and ends, it is nearly an angel.  Shines a little, flies a little, doesn’t
save anyone.

06 – 00
The crest of the Knights Templar shows two horsemen riding one horse.  The
tired animal is carrying them to a place where, after death, they will begin to
exude the charm of a burgled apartment.

07 – 00
A lonely creature is hunched over the endless white bar of a bird’s egg.  They
won’t serve him on credit anymore.  Soon he’ll get thrown out into the street to
fly just like the next bird.

08 – 00
The embryo is observing curfew and won’t grow after nine o’clock in the
evening.  He was promised: if you abide by the law, you get to skip the painful
birth process and instead get whisked off right away to the snow – white paradise
of some cosmetics laboratory.

09 – 00
You only need three fingers to count a small family.  The remaining two quiver
like pink trees, under which not a single Eve wants to be smothered in white
apples.

10 – 00
The dragon’s three heads look like an overdressed woman in the subway.
Everything gray near them is trying to unobtrusively dislocate its life on the
page’s next stop.

11 – 00
Maurizio Cattelan: an ostrich crashes its head through a cement floor.  Now he’s
in a place where you no longer have to squint out of contentment.

12 – 00
The bird knows which wing — left or right — is more important for flying.  The
one with feathers God can understand, even if He can’t read.

13 – 00
A fork is a spoon on whose back every night a knife leaves two deep scratches.

14 – 00
Crucified on a saltier, seatbelts fastened.  Soon there’ll be landing, customs,
baggage claim and canonisation.  I almost forgot to say that the flight here is
charter only.

15 – 00
The sky’s on vacation and dials up an inexpensive call – earth.  On the third day
there’ll be a forced visit to the rain.

16 – 00
Earlier, if an angel fell, he would sadly roam the earth for a long time afterwards.
They don’t make them like that anymore.  The angel smashes into smithereens,
into thousands of tiny 1978 bad Uriah Heep records.

17 – 00
A mushroom is the mini – bar of a five – star forest, featuring pan – fried airplane bottles
of the countryside not too close to Moscow.

18 – 00
A heart beating is the faint footfalls of a creature marking its territory with a red
smell.

19 – 00
In Switzerland they cry Russian – style on the shoulder of yellow cheese, burning
out holes deep as graves.

20 – 00
September jackpot: a star shower — disintegrating constellation tokens from the
crack between the pages of an anatomy textbook’s gaming machine.

21 – 00
Aphrodite never did come in to shore.  She kept sailing as far as possible, to
Scotland.  She’s still swimming there, among fish, drowning victims and
submarines, like an unnoticeable ancient Greek Loch Ness monster.

22 – 00
Only those who know how to leaf through properly get sold first -row book tickets.

23 – 00
The three dots at the close of any book are an electrical socket with a blow dryer
plugged in for an overflowing bathtub.

Translated by Ainsley Morse.

by Anzhelina Polonskaya

But should they say that
snow has fallen . . .
Snow on the black battlements
on the sidewalks
that scream with the voices of arches —
don’t believe them.
An autumn forest redolent with animal blood
and the pounding of feet (in a dream perhaps ?)
on the flattened paths of veins.
The taste of your saliva on my tongue —
the unsaid, un –
penetrated.
A hundred thousand “no’s” of faithless fire
and the two of us fated.
Eye to eye —
You should tell them:
There’s no snow outside, it’s within me.

Translated by Andrew Wachtel.

by Anzhelina Polonskaya

Like lost children, the dry leaves
on the mournful sidewalks
wind around our legs.
Could those fallen leaves
ever find their mother
under this autumn sky ?
Perhaps a bird, tired of flying,
giving in to nature’s ancient laws,
will entrust to them her dull wing.
Or, while speaking with you,
I will turn an accidental glance
toward that quiet arboreal rot,
more indifferent even
than God’s indifference.
The wind blows the leaves away.

Translated by Andrew Wachtel.