Today's Discovery / Сегодняшнее открытие

http://levloseff.blogspot.com/2013/08/on-portrait-of-me-by-my-son-dimitry.html

Nina Loseff's Memories of the Siege / Нина Мохова-Лосева «Блокадное детство»

Nina Loseff's childhood memories of the Siege of Leningrad in this month's Zvezda magazine (Russian only) / Нина Мохова-Лосева «Блокадное детство», журнал Звезда: http://bit.ly/15P96mD

Gentrification / Джентрификация

Gentrification 

                    For Svetlana Elnitskaya 

These days, the river only fools about,
idling its time away.
The power plant’s in ruins. The water, though,
still roars like the machines it drove,
with stifled wave.

A huge apartment. Through
what was a factory window, view
the autumn park, the river’s molten-honey seethe,
and further off, the brick-red hue
of fulling mills that used to bash and beat.

In this place woollen thread was spun,
and woven bolts stood stacked around,
the river buckled down in regulated run,
and surplus value grasped and grubbed,
so it accrued.

Enough accumulated. Now it’s time
for sanded oak, squared-up scrubbed tile,
for burnished brass and polished pane,
piped music. Artery, though, and vein
murmur that death is nigh.

And when the ennui endgame leaves us broke,
the nineteenth century will come again,
and cinch the river back into its yoke.
The mounting sun will light the factory gate,
upon the visage of the labouring folk

will rise the glow from the consumptive lung,
the scalded factory dog will moan,
the looms break into polyphonic song,
the shuttle snap back with its to-and-fro,
and wheels will claque along.

(Translation © G.S. Smith)

Джентрификация

                    Светлане Ельницкой

Река валяет дурака
и бьет баклуши.
Электростанция разрушена. Река 

грохочет вроде ткацкого станка,
чуть-чуть поглуше.

Огромная квартира. Виден
сквозь бывшее фабричное окно
осенний парк, реки бурливый сбитень,
а далее кирпично и красно
от сукновален и шерстобитен.

Здесь прежде шерсть прялась,
сукно валялось,
река впрягалась в дело, распрямясь,
прибавочная стоимость бралась
и прибавлялась.

Она накоплена. Пора иметь
дуб выскобленный, кирпич оттертый,
стекло отмытое, надраенную медь,
и слушать музыку, и чувствовать аортой,
что скоро смерть.

Как только нас тоска последняя прошьет,
век девятнадцатый вернется
и реку вновь впряжет,
закат окно фабричное прожжет,
и на щеках рабочего народца

взойдет заря туберкулеза,
и заскулит ошпаренный щенок,
и запоют станки многоголосо,
и заснует челнок,
и застучат колеса. 

On a Portrait of Me by my Son Dimitry / К моему портрету, нарисованному моим сыном Дмитрием

Lev Loseff with daughter Maria and son Dimitry, 1967
Лев Лосев с дочерью Марией и сыном Дмитрием, 1967

On a Portrait of Me by my Son Dimitry

My specs are taking leave of 
the frontiers of my face,
I’ve a pair of bright blue peepers,
and a nose of shape unclear,
while like a chocolate cataract
my flowing beard cascades –
I was never as attractive
as the way that I look here.


Fugitive strokes escaping,
running away in streaks,
and damp has made the paper
lose all its erstwhile shine,
while two big rosy patches
upon my chalky cheeks
fly over my moustaches
like flags with the Rising Sun.

(Translation © G.S. Smith)

http://levloseff.blogspot.com/2013/09/todays-discovery.html

К моему портрету, нарисованному моим сыном Дмитрием

Очки мои, покидающие
лица моего границы,
два светлосиреневых глаза,
очерк носа неясен,
водопадом из шоколада
вниз борода струится, -
наверное, никогда еще
не был я так прекрасен.

С бумаги струйки беглые
сбегают полосами,
от сырости бумага
совсем лишилась глянца,
а щеки мои белые,
как два японских флага,
и два больших румянца
восходят над усами.

The Door / Дверь

Photo by Marianna Volkova / фото Марианны Волковой
Conversations with Joseph Brodsky, S. Volkov, Слово-Word, New York, 1997
Разговоры с Иосифом Бродским, С. Волков, Слово-Word, Нью-Йорк, 1997

The Door

(A Photograph by Marianna Volkova)

A sketch pinned up — a man in a burnous,

someone who’d ventured into torrid zones,

Dante perhaps, or Lawrence of Arabia.

Postcards: ‘The Tide Crashing against the Cliffs’,

‘Crest of the Hindu Kush’, ‘Gilgamesh-Enkidu’,

‘The Pyramids at Giza’ (no — still Dante),

‘The Ponte Vecchio’ (maybe the Rialto?),

‘A Doorknob’ — no, that isn't on a postcard.

Here lives a Mr Nobody.

                                        Not trusting doors,

he won’t just open up when someone rings,

instead, he’ll take a good look through the peephole,

then he’ll back off — no point in tempting fate.

The day will come, though, when he’ll pull the pins out,

write all the postcards quickly as he can,

on top scrawl ‘To St Nicholas of the Sea’,

sign with a flourish ‘From Your Gilgamesh’,

then jerk the doorknob in towards himself,

and there will stand The Guide, in white burnous,

canals, bridges, and pyramids behind him,

and the tide crashes against the cliffs, then settles,

fizzing, upon the snows of the Hindu Kush.

(Translation © G.S. Smith)

Дверь

(фото Марианны Волковой)

Пришпилен рисунок: кто-то в бурнусе

из пускавшихся в раскаленные зоны,

то ли Данте, то ли Лоуренс Аравийский.

Открытки: «Прибой бьется о скалы»,

«Хребет Хиндукуш», «Гильгамеш и Энкиду»,

«Пирамиды в Гизе» (нет, все же Данте),

«Понте Веккьо» (или это Риальто?),

«Дверная ручка» — нет, ручка не на открытке.

Здесь живет Никто.

                                    Недоверчив к двери,

замка на звонок просто так не откроет,

сперва поглядит в смотровую дырку

да и отойдет от греха подальше.

Но настанет день — он повыдернет кнопки,

торопливо заполнит все открытки,

надпишет на каждой: «К Николе Морскому»,

подпишется расмашисто: «Твой Гильгамеш»,

рванет на себя дверную ручку,

а за дверью — Вожатый в белом бурнусе,

а за ним — каналы, мосты, пирамиды,

и бьется, и бьется прибой о скалы,

оседает, шипя, на снега Гиндукуша.

An Excursion / Экскурсия

An Excursion

‘We’re here! Welcome to Sodom,’ calls our guide.

So down we get, look round; then we’re inside

a cinema. Men pleasuring themselves,

the smell of semen. Not one seat is free.

Gangbang and incest up there on the screen,

per rectum and per vulvum; gaping wide,

he goes for dogmeat, she dead human flesh.

The next stop on our trip is known as Hell.

Courthouse, recruiting office, rancid smell—

hydrogen sulphide fumes, smokestacked away

from a chemical plant above a putrid stream.

This is a place where blue sky’s never been.

Orange the fumes and dun the sunset pall.

Corpses riding a tram jostle and sway.

Voilà un garçon, Knabe, little lad.

On his way home from school, lip smudged with blood;

no vocab book, no pencil case, no satchel,

no cap, no hope, and no immortal soul.

His pencils float away, so very slow—

the green, the blue, the yellow, and the red—

on the waters of Hell’s boundary canal.

(Translation © GS Smith)

Экскурсия

Вот наш водитель объявил: «Содом».
Сойдем. Осмотримся. Зайдем
в кинотеатр. Милуются мужчины,
и пахнет семенем. И нет свободных мест.
А на экране свалка и инцест,
седалищем, влагалищем и ртом
тот ест собачину, та просит мертвечины.

Вот едем дальше. Остановка «Ад».
Нарсуд. Военкомат. Химкомбинат.
Над дохлой речкой испускают трубы
смердящий сероводородом дым.
Здесь небо не бывает голубым.
Оранжев дым, закат коричневат.
В трамвае друг о дружку трутся трупы.

Voilà un garçon, ein Knabe, a boy.
Из школы с окровавленной губой,
без букваря, без ранца, без пенала,
без шапки, без надежды, без души.
Вот медленно плывут карандаши —
зеленый, желтый, красный, голубой —
водой Ад обводящего канала.

Sitting on my Chair in the Month of July / Сидя на стуле в июле

Lev Loseff in his NH backyard with Philip Nikolayev and Katia Kapovich, ca. 2003, photo Alexei Tsvetkov

Sitting on my Chair in the Month of July

It’s one that stands facing a window.
July’s fresh-moulded ammunition
rat-tatting hard against the pane.
What made it set to shoot today?

These bumblebees, sun-overheated,
have had their orders: at my secrets
fly themselves in to point blank range,
make background buzz and covert gaze.

Wind, bees, and birds! Time for rampaging!
Read what I’ve written on these pages,
feel free to look under the bed –
there’s nothing I would wish to hide.

Root through the underwear and paper!
Why should we always learn from nature?
Let her now learn something from us,
so at our end we may peruse

the way we tried to teach her play, at
laughter and grief in alternation,
at games with checkers, games with cards –
wherein we have our special smarts.

(Translation © G.S. Smith 2013)

Сидя на стуле в июле

Перед окном сижу на стуле.
Июлем отлитые пули
увесисто стучат в окно. 

Чего их нынче допекло?

Шмелям, на солнце перегретым,
приказано к моим секретам
как можно ближе подлететь
и поджужжать, и подглядеть.

Валяйте, ветер, пчелы, птицы, 

читайте эти вот страницы,
заглядывайте под кровать –
не буду ничего скрывать.

Белье, бумаги переройте,
не все же нас учить природе,
пускай поучится у нас,
а мы в последний вспомним час,

как мы природу обучали
игре то смеха, то печали,
да в дурака, да в поддавки,
в чем мы особенно ловки. 

Where the air is "roof-tile pink" / To Joseph: Self-translation

To Joseph

Where the air is "roof-tile pink,"
where lions are winged while birds
prefer stepping over the Piazza's flagstones
as if they were Germans or Japanese,
where cats can swim and walls can weep,
where the sun fumbles and drops around some morning gold
before testing the lagoon with its radiant elbow:
is the bath ready? –
there you got stuck, stayed and dissolved,
there you lounged in a cafe chair,
took a drag on your cigarette, froze, divided yourself in two,
floated off with a smoke ring, and –
go catch! – when you are everywhere,
now jingling with the porcelain
churches, now running with the breeze through a garden;
a defector, a man in a trenchcoat,
a jailbird on the run, you found a way
behind the looking glass,
disappeared at the crossing of parallel lines
leaving no footprints on water;
there you turned into a shabby tugboat,
into heavy mother-of-pearl clouds above murky canals,
in the coffee aroma of a Sunday morning,
where Sunday is tomorrow and tomorrow is always now.

May 1996

Rendered, from the Russian, by the author with John Kopper.

G.S. Smith's translation: Where the air itself is ‘pink-tinged from the pantiles’ / Где воздух «розоват от черепицы»

Alessandro Niero's translation: Dove l’aria “si arrosa di tegole” / Где воздух "розоват от черепицы"

Two More Reviews of 'As I Said' in English

AS I SAID

Lev Loseff

translated by G. S. Smith

ARC Publications 

by Amy Henry

This bilingual collection of the poems of Lev Loseff begins with a preemptory acknowledgement, by series editor Jean Boase-Beier, of the difficulties of translating poetry, especially when a reader has no knowledge of the original language and thus might miss subtleties that the poet intended. As Boase-Beier puts it:

We know that translated poetry is neither English poetry that has mysteriously arisen from a hidden foreign source, nor is it foreign poetry that has silently rewritten itself in English. We are more aware that translation lies at the heart of all our cultural exchange; without it, we must remain artistically and intellectually insular.

With this in mind, both Russian and English versions are here provided “side-by-side because translations do not displace the originals; they shed new light on them and are in turn themselves illuminated by the presence of their source poems.” And translator G. S. Smith shows a similar attention to detail and attitude that goes beyond mere words: Smith was actually able to translate much of Loseff’s personality in the poems, as the two collaborated over the translations over a period of several years and Loseff gave his approval to the resulting works. Loseff, an editor himself who has translated Joseph Brodsky, guided Smith in some areas with comments and suggestions, but his firmest request was that the poems be presented in reverse chronological order. It was Smith who chose the poems for the collection, selecting those that had the best prospects for accurate translation.

Yet another scholar, Barry P. Scherr, contributes an introduction to Loseff that gives some essential biographical information, making the poems that much more compelling. Loseff was part of what was casually called the “philological school” of Russian poets; intensely familiar with and influenced by traditional Russian literature, he refers to his country’s most famous writers (e.g. Pasternak, Dostoevsky, and Pushkin) in many of his own poems. Besides this cultural expertise, Scherr notes that Loseff is also a poet of observation, one whose emotion “arises from contemplating the world outside the poet, rather than the writer’s most intimate thoughts.” Yet Loseff does reveal himself on his terms, subtly, and G.E. Smith picks up on such nuances.

“At the Clinic” for example, will strike many readers viscerally (here’s the full poem):

The doctor mumbled things about my kidneys,
and looked away. I pitied this MD.
For life to me had burst its inhibitions,
and now flowed heatedly and easily.

Diploma on the wall. MD. His awkward silence.
Hand scribbling out a slanting recipe.
While I'm astonished by this easy lightness—
so easy had the news turned out to be!

What happened to the demons that beset me?
I'm breathing easily, not like before.
I'll go and let them have some blood for testing,
and give a bit more blood to sign this poem.

A great deal is revealed in the poetic subtext: “Burst” and the phrase “flowed heatedly” contrast with the idea of ease. In fact, Loseff uses variances of “easy” four times in the poem’s three stanzas. At the conclusion, there’s a play on words in regard to blood—using both “give” and “let”—that indicates a sense of surrender despite the lightness he’s just described. Curiously, Loseff initially speaks of the “doctor” delivering the news, only to repeatedly call him “MD” afterwards. The usage on the facing page in Russian also uses a different word for doctor after the first, which made me curious if there was an aural play on words here, as “MD” in English sounds like “empty.” Does the Russian word Loseff used, Врач, also hint at another meaning?

A poem that reaches into Russian literary history is “The Blood Washed Off. The Axe Dumped in the River,” which seems to make a clear reference to Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. While Raskolnikov stashed the axe rather than dumping it in the Neva, Loseff contrasts this murderer’s obsession over guilt (felt even before the murder occurred) and cleanliness with contemporary criminals, who “abandon axe and empty bottles by the body, mumble / when questioned, not bother washing off the blood.”

Throughout the collection, Smith’s translation beautifully captures a duality to the meanings. A phrase like “the river’s molten-honey seethe” in a poem about the death of a commercial area easily reminds the reader of the river Lethe and the feeling of forgetfulness. The layers are uncovered by Smith but never fully revealed—keeping Loseff an enigmatic poet whose work is destined for further study.

ORIGINAL HERE:  http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2012winter/loseff.php

***

Warwick Review, December 2012, Ian Revie

Lev Loseff’s As I Said comes with a very enlightening introduction by Narry P. Scherr, Professor of Russian at Dartmouth College, which details the importance of rhythmic structures and sound patterns in the original Russian poems and underlines the challenges facing the translator attempting to render them in English. He present Loseff as very much a classicist and one whose roots, despite his long exile in the United States, remained firmly in his native city of Leningrad/St Petersburg?almost half his life was spent in New England. Loseff was himself a scholar and a specialist on Joseph Brodsky, to whom his indebtedness is obvious; but his poems are no means literary in their inspiration, as is clear in these excellent versions by G.S.Smith, Professor Emeritus of Russian at Oxford. Much of what Loseff writes arises from perception of the surrounding world whether immediate or remembered:

Awakened by an unexpected silence,
a sudden gift from heaven, white as white,
with indignation I reject?should say
indifference?the horrors of the night.

These lines give a fair idea od how the poet’s subject matter so often appears existing in the immediate present yet inextricably linked to dimensions of past time and imagination, for, as the second verse makes clear, it is of the nature of perception to be shaped by the roots of experience:

Vertically downwards, through the matted
Growing things that crowd my garden plot,
Here comes the God of atmospheric matters,
In order to disperse our parlous lot.

It is almost unnecessary to say that such roots inevitably touch matters political, for although almost all of Loseff’s work dates from his time in America, had had reached the age of 38 before leaving the USSR and therefore had lived with the suffocating presence of ideological conformity, or non-conformity and its consequences. In ‘Joseph in 1965’ he writes

Those Party activists were bloody-minded
enough to hound a flower for its fragrance
or a star for its twinkle.

From the poet they demanded
Poems “with civic resonance”.

and makes Brodsky’s period of enforced hard labour into an act of silence resistance:
He listened to his heart’s fading quake,
To the clamorous squawk of roots,
and mended those tatty roofs.

However, such roots are also deep n the fabric of Russian life in all its aspects. Towards the end of the volume, a long sequence, ‘The Extended Day and Other Memories’, begins with an evocation of a timeless Russia:

I see it clear: the dacha, the wild roses,
the wooden fence, the gate with rusted latch,
the shiny-wrinkled, baggy trousers;
I touch wood, superstitious as I am.
I see it clear: the samovar is fuming
like tsar or some high officer annoyed?
a colonel who’s been fuelled up with fircones,
and shakoed by a plume of lilac smoke.
So near, how out your hand and you can feel it,

And it is the immediacy with which the memory informs the present that seems to be the source of the power in Loseff’s work. This volume makes better known an undoubtedly major Russian poet to be placed alongside those greats who have unflinchingly borne witness to a troubled century, to the impossible love of a homeland from which one is exiled, and to lives lived with courage in the face of repression.

ORIGINAL HERE: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/writingprog/warwickreview/dec2012/

‘Me and the Old Lady’ / «Я и старая дама»

Russian School at Norwich University, 1987

‘Me and the Old Lady’ (Norwich, 1987-1997)

Ground down by social security, senility, neurosis,

wearing a greasy, ‘dusty rose’ parka

and a backpack stuffed with filthy clobber,

in the midday heat this lady walks by my window.

So deep in thought, the heat to her’s no burden.

Ten years of summers, June to August,

after morning lectures, at mid-day precisely

I would observe this flower of Creation.

If I were Zoshchenko, Shvarts, or Olesha,

I might discern in this pedestrian equestrian,

in this angel dusted with grey perspiration,

a mellifluous oracle uttering ‘Poverty is Freedom’.

Except where are those writers? Where that oracle?

Where that reading of omens? Where the hide and

hair of faith? All gone. The writers quietly departed.

And along with them went religion, psychoanalysis,

symbolism—and the Summer School at Norwich.

All that’s left is a scene etched in my memory

like an indictment: ‘Me and the Old Lady’.

Around this scene is the white border of someone

else’s window, one that’s dropped into oblivion.

And, as yet, no different scene can be discerned.

6 January 1998

(Translation © G.S. Smith)

«Я и старая дама» (Норвич, 1987-1997)

Жертва козней собеса, маразма, невроза,

в сальном ватнике цвета «пыльная роза»,

с рюкзаком за спиной, полным грязного хлама,

в знойный полдень проходит под окном моим дама.

Так задумчиво, что и жара ей не в тягость.

Десять лет (т.е. лет — с июня по август)

после утренних лекций под окном ровно в полдень

наблюдал я цветочек этот Господень.

Будь я Зощенкой, Шварцем или Олешей,

я б сумел прочитать в этой всаднице пешей,

в этом ангеле, бледном от серого пота,

сладкозвучный оракул: «Нищета есть свобода».

Только где те писатели? где тот оракул?

где то чтение знаков? где тот кот, что наплакал

веры? Нету. Писатели тихо скончались.

Вместе с ними религия, психоанализ,

символизм и вермонтская летняя школа.

Лишь осталась картина, на манер протокола —

занесенная в память: «Я и старая дама».

Обрамляет картину белая рама

от упавшего в прошлое чужого окна.

И другая картина пока не видна.

6 января 1998

As I Said Review in Today's TLS

Click image to read. TLS subscribers may read here: http://bit.ly/11K3DhQ

Out of Bunin / Из Бунина

Nina Loseff / Нина Лосева, 1959  Photo: Lev Loseff / Фото: Лев Лосев

Out of Bunin

For Nina

The rooks fly in and then fly out again;
this cast-iron cross, though, has to stand on guard,
presenting to this sombre plot of ground
the wan light of its passport photograph.

Each little sigh becomes a little sin.
The night’s the same for all when it sets in.
A great big starry paw stroking the earth
of this graveyard, an earth that has no breath.

23-24 March 2002, Oxford, Ohio

(Translation © G.S. Smith)

Из Бунина

Нине

Прилетят грачи, улетят грачи,
ну а крест чугунный торчи, торчи,
предъявляй сей местности пасмурной
тихий свет фотографии паспортной.

Каждый легкий вздох — это легкий грех.
Наступает ночь — одна на всех.
Гладит мягкая звездная лапища
бездыханную землю кладбища.

23-24 марта 2002, Oxford, Ohio

Freeze Frame / Стоп-кадр

Photo: L. Loseff /  Фото: Л. Лосев

Freeze Frame

Where did it happen? In Germany, some little town—now what was its name?

Poodle on leash, someone nasty approached down the street, a vile-suited man,

and he addressed me. He spoke in a tongue not locally known; in fact, it was mine.

That’s how they proffer a stolen-goods Kodak, or porn, or a one-night broad.

Thanks, but no thanks. Every crowd promenading is full of such finds. That bad-

breath hiss was hot and horrendous, I probably ought to have shunned him, but

I’ve never been much for continuation, I don’t like to know how things end.

Twitch of the poodle’s tail when to its master’s proposal I nodded assent.

High in the empty sky the black spiral of swallows now hanging suspend-

-ed, in that fixed sunset sky the bedlam of bells no longer now rolled,

the hands of the clocks all stood still.

           But outside the frame, the sun broiled,

the hands of the clocks went on moving the same. Just one bell still tolled.

Life’s pandemonium continued, it yelled and it cursed, went on anyway,

summoned afar, stupified with strong drink, accosted with bill to be paid.

All that I kept was a postcard reminder. But what I lost, I won’t say.

(Translation © G.S. Smith)

Стоп-кадр

Где это было? В каком-то немецком — как его там? — городке.

Скверный прохожий в костюмчике мерзком с пуделем на поводке,

он обратился ко мне на неместном, т.е. на моём, языке.

Так предлагают украденный кодак, девку на вечер, порно.

Тоже находка! Подобных находок в уличной давке полно.

Шёпот вонючий был жарок и гадок, я отвернулся бы, но

я вообще не люблю продолженья, знанья, что будет потом.

Вот и кивнул на его предложенье. Пудель подёргал хвостом.

Чёрной спиралью застыло круженье ласточек в небе пустом,

в неизменяемом небе закатном звук колокольный застыл,

замерли стрелки часов.

А за кадром — солнце пускалось в распыл,

стрелки часов по обычным законам двигались. Колокол бил.

Жизнь продолжала гулять, горлопанить, крыть, не терять куражу,

далью манить, алкоголем дурманить, счёт предъявлять к платежу.

Всё, что сберёг я, — открытку на память. Что потерял — не скажу.

Toilette / Туалет

Toilette

Knick-knacks glimmered there beneath the mirror:

netsuke, chainlets, cutouts, rings, those eggs

Fabergé used to lay at Eastertime,

some smoky-pink Venetian vials set

to flank a sky-blue Danish piglet, and

an inlaid Persian casket made to serve

as a receptacle to store receipts,

(gas, telephone, electric light) and also

prescriptions for a scarce bacterial ointment,

and on mahogany scorched by curling-irons

a dusting of some powder, greasy-pink,

a little golden cylinder reflecting

a bright red spot on a blue envelope

without a stamp, instead, a jet-black imprint:

FIELD CENSORSHIP: INSPECTED AND APPROVED—

DEVORPPA DNA DETCEPSNI :PIHSROSNEC DLEIF,

reversed because those colours, pink and blue,

the Persian-Danish stuff, the irons, the ointment,

was infiltrating back behind the mirror,

where glimmered Fabergé in Venice fog,—

silently clucking, which was it that he laid

—necklace, or netsuke, or perhaps a ring?

The prescription for the phone or for the ointment?

Or was it all cheap trinkets from Galicia?

.............................................................

.............................................................

over this world there hovered, not a visage,

but a black platter fashioned out of paper,

that used to play ‘The International’

(Translation © G.S. Smith)

Туалет

На подзеркальнике мерцают цацки —

нецке, цепочки, выцинанки, кольца, яйца,

снесенные под пасху Фаберже,

а возле дымно–розовых флаконов

венецианских, датской голубой

свиньи вся в инкрустации шкатулка

персидская, хранилище квитанций

за газ, за телефон, за свет, рецептов

на остродефицитный стрептоцид,

на красном дереве в прожогах от щипцов

пороша розовато–жирной пудры,

а золотой цилиндрик ярко-красным

пятном отметил голубой конверт,

где вместо марки черный-черный штамп:

ПРОВЕРЕНО ВОЕННОЙ ЦЕНЗУРОЙ —

ЙОРУЗНЕЦ ЙОННЕОВ ОНЕРЕВОРП,

поскольку розовое, голубое,

персидско-датское, щипцы и стрептоцид,

все это пробиралось в зазеркалье,

где и мерцал в венецианском дыме,

беззвучно квохча, Фаберже — он снес

цепочку, или нецке, иль кольцо?

рецепт на телефон иль веронал?

иль это галицийская безделка?

…………………………………

…………………………………

над этим миром жило не лицо,

а черная бумажная тарелка,

играющая «Интернационал».