by Victor Sosnora
 translated by Genya Turovskaya

Oh!  In these elegies there are many strange beetles,
held up by the wings I have them singing
alien names, personnel, numbers, planets,
for so long they’ve asked to be included in my herbarium.
I could cross them out, I’ve no time for them,
the imperial scepter isn’t so friendly to beetles
but is merciful to the voices of the lowly too,
so let them, pinned on a needle, abide here.

by Victor Sosnora
translated by Genya Turovskaya

You don’t believe?  I do believe!  So don’t believe then!
While I pulverize autumn, black chess men walk over the snow,
while I go on about autumn, the days are at nil,
black gales are poured into cups.
This sky, its implacable wail,
not reading books, it hammers black planks in place,
builds over the world a blockade of days
in the acid of nights, where nails are sword-like.
Close your mind and multiply your rage,
lay two ears down on a stone pillow,
the lighthouse grows unused to the sun, shine on and on
all day under a little—low watt—bulb.

by Vladimir Gandelsman
 translated by Anna Halberstadt

On joy—a bridge falling asleep
its spans half-closing}
their eyelids,
how snow keeps flying onto trees,
into their forever open brains,

on river-bed, where a violet drill
revolving heavily
its burdens,
sways heavy chains of
mercury seines

and my little matchbox—
gets buried—up to the roof—by snow,
gifted for the time-being
by a seasonal severe frost…
Two-three landscapes, feelings, two-three themes
and the God of childhood—

this is all there is, all crumbs inside.
On joy, on differences—outside
the stillness’s great.
Soul or body—how any season
is so much better, than they are.

Only the speech, precise, lifted from the bottom,
Wet and free-flowing
is what all of this different—
blind, randomly picked up—
speech always equals.

On joy—on how everything around
slowly falls asleep, on how
a militia’s comet flies,
signaling,
wrapping the greenery of light,
of snow,
around its wheels.

by Vladimir Gandelsman
  translated by Anna Halberstadt 

from the book “Reading the Schedule”
Sorrow and Joy

On Monday the work week starts,
meaning, that the five-headed creature
tries to ruin our story,
as well as it would
any other…
What sorrow!

I have no memory left of Tuesday,
nor of Wednesday or Thursday,
but on Friday no one should dare
tell me, so to say, that I am
drowning my mind in vodka!
I am nothing more, than a zero,
practically a corpse.

But on Saturday life takes a turn
to be calmer, without agitation.
As if chained together
by the song
Lida and I are dancing to
Leonard Cohen.

And to top that (on Sunday!)
on the seventh day of creation
we are blessed by the autumn foliage
on the garden paths
saving us,
leaves quietly falling}
in the dusk.
How joyful!