«While there is still time – sing, write fearlessly and obediently»… – Victor Fet

THE BEGINNING

Atop the swamp of the years,
Let’s place shaky boards of the reason.
They say, in the beginning there was a word;
Which word it was, we cannot guess.

In which languages did it sound?
Which book pages did it adorn
As it lost the features of the beginning
And adopted mundane tasks?

Someplace, in a desert, where
An ancient river ceased to flood,
Deposits of tiny crystals
Nurture the beginnings of a language.

The life’s train carries us away
Through that empty, unknown country,
Where the words that burn, unseen,
Are buried deep in the rock layers.

A NEW YEAR BALLAD

Out of the new times, out of the old lands,
Where a candy of being is stuck
Together with an eyeless mask of reason,
A beautiful fairytale comes.

Its main hero is a medical doctor,
Stars above him are shining like sugar grains,
The snow falls like New Year’s cottonballs,
There’s a chimney-sweep frozen above every chimney,
And the whole world looks like a title page
With a sophisticated arabesque.

I hear the native tom-toms in the jungle,
A colonel dreams about his medals,
And everyone wonders at crimson sails
On that clipper that the legend said will come.
Clouds are sliding above the Alpine snows,
And all the ships safely come to their ports.

A cardboard king from an early poem by Blok
Whispers the password in the guard’s ear,
The smell of fireplace is mixed
With a sour taste of a vitamin pill,
The heros enter their gingerbread house
Where one earns one’s living by honest work.

The toys there cling to the shop-window lights,
Nobody there counts the remaining days,
There Hansel and Gretel shudder at once
As the rusty door hinges creak,
There, I thrust up as a fairytale sword
My lollipop rooster on a sticky stick.

LETHE

The silver Lethe,
The river or oblivion!
You come from far away,
From the other edge of the world.

You absorb our dusty volumes,
Our years, our space,
Thunders of Derzhavin,
Passion of Pushkin.

Lethe’s water is clear,
Deep is Lethean cold,
The hell of the twentieth century
Will cool down inside you.

Through us, the force of events
Threads its string, so that we can
All that is, and all that was,
Remember—and forget.

We’ll vanish without a trace,
We’ll sink into your
Frozen strata
Of bottom sediment.

And a geologist of the new days
Who will know good and evil,
Will put a shard of your strata
Under a glass.

KRIKVIAGA

1.
Moisture lingers long in the soil
Near the Little Krikviaga river.
Clay, sand, loess have been dug and taken away
in the mornings by a sovkhoz [Soviet Farm].

Party bosses used to visit this riverbank,
The Regional Committee came for a picnic,
Krikviagan princes used to hunt an aurochs,
And Finno-Ugrian tribesmen fished for their eels.

Today, the road is all but gone,
The Krikviagan Ford is deep and muddy,
The locals think in desperation
Not of God but of dollar.

2.
Near the Little Krikviaga river
The world knows neither good nor evil,
No Mohammed, no Christ:
Come visit those places!

Throw a haircomb and a shaver into your bag,
Say your useless prayer,
Sew on your hanging shoulderstripe,
Climb the overnight train.

Krikviaga is not that far.

They said on the radio that an archeology guy
Took all the culture layer with him to Moscow.

Generally, the folks here aren’t really evil.

A FORM OF LIFE

Locked in a fragile body
Among the rotting roots and grasses,
We know not of our goal:
We traded the goal for the integrity.

We’ll be protected by a layer of sand
From the maddening starfire,
Keeping the balance of forces
In our lightning-fast life.

Let the herds of the reeds rustle
At the boundary of earth and water:
We belong to this layer,
And we’re not likely to forget it.

We were known, and were forgotten,
We have no name of our own,
But soeckles of dust rise
Into the atmosphere of the future years.

They settle down on a steep promontory
Where the night fog rises,
Where a magic castle stands,
All made of silver glass.

THE SECRET

We’ve finally learned
The mystery, the eternal secret:
Where there is a source of light,
There must be a source of darkness.

The world’s walls immediately
Turned into a walnut shell
Beyond our nurseries,
On the pages of grown-up books.

Who rules the darkness and the light?
Who cracks walnuts with a door?
Our days have no pictures,
Only conversations.

Our knowledge is haphazard:
How do you know light from darkness?
Maybe there is no mystery in the world?
Maybe that is the secret?

THE CHILDREN’S SONG

The Founder has left for us
Hundreds of tablets made of clay;
They describe all the rules
For particles and molecules.

Rules for the body, rules for the soul,
For the consequences, for the causes,
For the reasonable limits
Of all the values possible.

So what will remain a secret?
Those other shores,
Awash with light,

Where our passions
Are but Christmas-tree candies
And shiny tinsel.

WHILE THERE IS STILL TIME

While there is still time – sing, write
fearlessly and obediently;
trace carefully and readily
the travels of your soul.
The smashed honeycombs of centuries
still keep some magic honey;
the sky is still made of crystal,
the musical notation is still understood;
but beyond this stockade of words
the world is a random outcrop
of alien, sedimentary rocks.
Time’s essence stands bare;
as we reach a new limit,
on a blackboard with a little piece of chalk
we scribble the runes of our formulas.
And still we search for reason,
listening to the eternal rhythm of winter and summer,
beyond the spectrum of Pushkin’s light,
beyond the edge of Gogol’s darkness.

IONIAN SEA

Words cannot describe
what rules the sky;
mind cannot imagine
what rises in the darkness.

I’m just leafing through
all the early chapters,
flocks of crazy particles
scattering headlong.

This text is dense and boring;
the mind is not taught to think
in a bottomless language;
I lie, beaten and crouching,
on the hardening sand.

I gaze into the abyss of the world,
looking forward and down,
so Ulysses was tormented
on the island of Kerkyra.

Making fun of me,
cursing my rightness,
the Poseidon’s wave
washed me away from memory.

There is peace and grace
in the realm of a good Phaeacian,
all the symbols are well-trained—
but I need my Ithaca,
which is one step away.

Gods! I’m still alive!
Dissolving in the ancient moisture,
I am one last step away
from the coastline.

DAEDALOS

A few details, quite possibly,
we’ve missed. Recall how, as children,
we soared into the blissful dreams of mind
where one could see the whole Universe.
Our wax dripping down on the high mountains of Crete,
as golden chariots sped toward the sunset,
we looked across the vast, wide open Ocean
at that new, Western, India—it wasn’t
discovered yet. We still possess
all letters of this alphabet, but now,
as shiny tracks of Helios fade away,
the Snow Queen’s icy palaces keep none
of the old wisdom. So the gods decided—
I have no other answer.

Text & Übersetzung Victor Fet, Marshall University