“let’s gather words for a house…” | “papa…”

for Olga Sedakova

let’s gather words for a house

we’ll lay gibberish carpets

follow blueprints of speech

with all its jagged verbs

hum-chat names, all the goose-honk thunder,

bazaar of humans, all jackdawy and birdy

we’ll lose ourselves in the dormer window

we will bend napes

and shove our ears out into the garden

into the splendid tweets and chirps

into the cacophonous cricket-chirps of sweet-voice things

into the rumblings and hoofbeats, the ahems and heavy breathing

of wooden basins, light bulbs, rods, sweatshirts

caramels, rags, grills, train cars, rings

tame, marry, partner, try to weld everyone together

let them wash themselves in birdbaths

and stand before the young book

the raspy-voiced grammar book shouts on the growing roots of velimir

the crystal dandy says at him—moment-of-eyes

they are name-wanderers, they are those-who-touch-gods, temple-makers

they are speech-bearers wandering through the hungry margins of notebooks

the black-and-white book—it is noising

the blackberry book—it is burning

the white furry book—it is talking

behold the birds, birds that peck and sing in the vineyard

the garden is built like a miracle-flute, it’s full of hollows and branches

every bush is inhabited, enormous-secluded, with brimming berries and birds

there are nests, there are clusters—the birds do not weave themselves rooms

your labor’s misguided, builder

the birds don’t build jails here, but the freedoms to peck and to sing

we beckoned words for a wedding from beautiful stones

we sloppily copied a book, a steep river

the beard of dissonant words rushes over the stones

the home, like smoke, cannot stand—it crowds like an outdoor dream

the homeless builder, silent before the bottomless garden

1994

Translated by Anastasiia Gorlova and Paul Lee

papa

where do these rails go

to my childhood

but then where do they come from

from yours

andryusha

no

i’m not making this up

yes

a lot

everything

has changed

in thirty years

thirty years

but not these

silver and pyramidal

not this wormwood wilderness

and bustle

crickets

tiny soldiers

scarab beetles

not this unsoldered earth

and the perfumed smell of rail ties

and rails

have gushed

from you

to me

2002

Translated by Emily Kessel, Elizaveta Korskaia, Megan Steinheimer and Martha Kelly