by Sergei Gandlevsky
     translated by Philip Nikolayev

In the vegetal life of a poet
There’s that ill-fated period when
He is shying from heavenly daylight
And afraid of the judgments of men;
From the pit of the city of Moscow,
Where he’s feeding the pigeons some grain,
He is swearing a terrible oath to
Settle scores, to get even, with pain—
But, thank God, it’s Vivaldi’s spasmodic
Violin that instructed us in
The fine art of the flight one melodic
Private evening all swooning in jasmine:
To such heights climbs the soar of the void
That the soul, now in danger of harm,
Hits the earth like a petrified bolide—
Yet the jasmines are tickling your arm…
We continue, impervious, in ignorance,
Drinking hard, celebrating our cowardice,
Breaking matchsticks when we feel nervous,
Smashing dishes at home out of powerlessness,
As we swear to be blunt and courageous
And expose the whole truth of today.
But no, poems aren’t weapons of vengeance.
Silver fountains of decency, they.

by Sergei Gandlevsky
translated by Philip Nikolayev

Farewell to youth, my very own Falstaff,
I board a streetcar.
All part of evolution, I once was
a loafer, but have since become a loner.
And yet this April
with its alcohol-free drip
hits me like booze.
Maybe, it’s time tobuild a birdhouse,
direct my efforts at a worthy target.
Or, maybe, time to do some target-shooting.
In other words,there is no consolation.

by Sergei Gandlevsky
translated by Philip Nikolayev

My age still years away from patriarchal,
It isn’t time yet, when visiting friends,
To scare their teenagers with a fake basso voce:
“Remember when I carried you in my arms?”
Nevertheless, the overall trajectory
That takes its origin within the doors
Of Moscow’s Grauerman Maternity Home,
Continuing down an enfilade of other
Premises that I stumble on in the dark,
Hand always groping for the secret switch,
So as to illuminate at night my wares,
Is now becoming clear.
Here’s my childhood waiving
A folder of sheet music, over there
My adolescence plays ping-pong, my early
Adulthood, which I love as much as my childhood,
Is full of words and has lost all count of
Fleet-foot kilometers of wondrous journeys.
Then come the years lived out in the four walls
Of an average Muscovite alcoholism.
We sat around, we drank, we sang in chorus
Of rivers, of parting, of the black earth our mother.
But suddenly you yawn: “This song’s refrain
Is kind of boring, no?”—Boring?  But why?
It isn’t boring: it is pure tradition.
Along some warehouses of the railway station,
With a happy-go-lucky puppy on a leash
And one umbrella, in coats of the rainy season,
Walking unhurriedly, at last we reach
The Moskva River.  Here, in this abandoned
Six window professorial dacha, we
Must squat awhile.  A flitting nymphalid
Zigzags capriciously through the balcony.
Tomorrow, at the water well, the water,
Having turned stiff and glossy overnight,
Will slide out of the pail, a pale-blue cylinder
Precariously collapsing at our feet.
The day after tomorrow, rain will come and
Shade in in graphite and haste the terrace space,
Firewood and fence.  The grass under the washstand
Glows, stained with bright toothpaste.
From time to time, the blue, too, shows its face,
While the song never ends.  In the refrain
We strain and hurry through the diving rain
Toward a heavy crossing, windy as a drill ground.
Loud seagulls soar up from the new-bared land,
As human speech screeches on scratched LPs,
Slowly dissolving.  The pup perks up his ears:
His master’s voice!
The grief not worth our tears,
We’ll sit around, smoking and drinking tea.
OK, it’s time for bed.  I know I’ll dream
Of a long endless stream, one that may seem
To be among the greatest rivers out there, maybe.

by Philip Nikolayev

So let there be local poets,
the poets of where we live.
Because we’re everywhere.
Quiet, invisible,
or sometimes loud and drunken.
There used to be so precious few of us,
but today every city square,
as well as many of the farms
and certain watering holes
boast poet a laureate.  We can socialize,
have several tequilas and smoke up,
not globally known.  Not poets of everywhere,
nor of all time.  More like, Davis Square, Inman,
Central and so on, early 21st-century.  And why not,
one location not better than another,
all backdrop to our drama, the universe
is self-similar, ultimately reversible to a point.
Eventually, in the big bright poetry cemetery,
we continue to remain intensely local,
having finally transcended
the ego, the self-importance, the silly ambitions,
poets of just one
solitary spot.