VIKTOR SOSNORA: six poems

American Poetry Review, The, Jul/Aug 2004 by Halperin, Mark, Georgeoliani, Dinara

or are these my blood-drops from the sea?

Fog. A familiar sign of the moon in the ocean,

a warm shadow of the last desert pine on the sand.

You, you don't need to cry,-this is my face at the bottom of the goblet

in that buffoonery sea, blood-drop of wine.

Fog-the running of a white-hoofed horse.

The third bell will also pass. Time to make the sign of the cross.

(There was a buffoon-become a monk. Revenge on fashion).

Where's the fourth? It isn't to be. We won't hear it.

You, woman, you don't need to cry, we both are only embraces . . .

Maiden-Fish

You walk like a fish on its tail. The floor is red.

We have a room, but in communal rocks.

A chocolate cupboard. The desk in coins.

The window is electric oil.

Fish, I'm your brother; we're both sea beasts.

You're stretched out on a blue blanket.

Embracing bellies and blindness of amorous

ravings! . . . Our lamp will go out.

Is it despair? Or is it jealousy marching through

the lymph like the Alexandrian cavalry? We'll leave

these pastures . . . We have a room; we are fish,

there are two of us. We will choke here . . .

For tomorrow, the labor of hooves and Pegasus' wings,

Censorship, and coldness of bread,

we will clink kneecaps in toasts,

have champagne ripples of a fish-scale!

Oh, the howl of a fish! We need tails, as in combat,

Muscles in nodes, and a yell and prattle,

we need fingers-five and five on waists!

I kiss . . . Hickeys on nipples

from both fingers, and responding kisses

and gills stuck to face-gills.

And in between leg flaps,

we're sucking mucus with tongues

sinister . . . To learn is to hate.

To love is not to know. We recall-knew all:

there's no intuition, not a single capillary

that hasn't caressed somebody's loins;

we can untangle neither all the hair of all the bodies,

nor dishonorable whips nor the evil of a buss;

Or simply-no sin in a sin, no temple in a temple.

A boom from the moon. Petersburg avenues.

Fish, we swim away into canals and it's easier

for us to lap the life of others, the bodies of others,

to vomit, no matter under or on top of whom.

So labor will pass. So the world will pass. So will my kin.

I, the last, soundlessly bless you, last ones! . . .

There are two mottoes in a monk's cell:

a smile and the lips of the snake.

DINARA GEORGEOLIANI was educated in Moscow (Russia) and Tbilisi (the Republic of Georgia), as a linguist, a specialist in English/Russian translation and comparative linguistics. She teaches in the Foreign Languages Department at Central Washington University and, with Mark Halperin, translates from the Russian. Their bilingual selection and translation of Viktor Sosnora's poems, A Million Premonitions, is forthcoming from Zephyr Press.

MARK HALPERIN has taught in America, Japan, Estonia and Russia. He is the author of four volumes of poetry, the latest of which, Time As Distance, was published by New Issues. Together with Dinara Georgeoliani, he translates from the Russian of such authors as Platonov, Kushner, Pyetsukh, and Sosnora.