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This piece is about 2 printed pages long. It is copyright © Nina Iskrenko and Vitaly Chernetsky and Jacket magazine 2008. See our [»»] Copyright notice. The Internet address of this page is http://jacketmagazine.com/36/rus-iskrenko-trb-hernetsky.shtml
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* * *
The talkative beehive of square leaves
dryly punched little Easter loaves of clocks
chestnuts smooth like salt on dark skin
the most precious is the day that died
cardboard sound behind double glass
here and there
little blocks of tears cut out evenly without notches
and sweet sabers of prolonged languor
the sharpened perpendiculars
of grass and night
the castanets of wolves
one should have mourned the last three flights
a hair is tied to cast iron gallows
and the plastic balloon of a kiss
is swinging forgotten under September snowfall
when having overcome the crackling chalk of snowstorm
the trees hide from us
and cool down
horizontally
* * *
Fourth I’m walking down a street
I carry eight things in a shopping bag
My barrack rose
has gnawed away all the pencils
And the rain is all hands in pant pockets
jazz-rock hockey sticks and victuals
And a theater poster
off a Bakhchisarai shoulder
And I’m exhausted like after
lunch
I pester all those passing by
and swear in iambic tetrameter
at the cats on Marx Avenue
And dragging pigeon leftovers
along the sidewalk
and grinning like a human
King Dadon approaches me
he’s in a leopard shirt
with a behaviorist fuse
he opens the door in such a way
as if the heart has no place to sit down
And through me for about fifteen seconds
he comprehends Being
and departs like a foreigner
in his flying saucer into a better world
And I stand there not having taken the dog muzzle
off the minstrel head
and sense the smell of the Ministry of Railway Construction
and of Shemakhan sausage
See Olga Livshin: Nina Iskrenko (1951–1995): Lyricism at the End of an Era, in this issue of Jacket.