Zakhar Prilepin - Sin

I still hope. And hope
does not soothe me,
but slightly embitters me.

and at the slave market in Ancient Rome
where the smell makes you sick
at the noisy, savage market
the son of a patrician
eccentric and conceited
I wander with my slave boy

and you are there
in the crowd of slaves for sale
dirty and angry
you turn away and close your eyes
but I saw you two thousand years later
I recognized you at once

and bought by me
you are the only one who has the right
to come to me in the mornings
when I am still asleep
you bring me berries and juices
and of all imaginable grief on earth
I am only tormented by one
when a cherry stone
gets caught in my front teeth

July was swarthy,
but August was white,
and dreams were white.
The whole earth turned pale or grey,
as though it had eaten henbane.
And we felt uneasy
because of all this whiteness.

White as a ghost,
covered with a sheet,
you slept, curled up like a cat,
and waking up, charmingly angry,
sent curses to mosquitoes,
amusing and obscene.

In sleep your head was spinning
and so was something older.
You barely breathed,
thrashing the bed without mercy,
blowing away yesterday’s narcosis
with your breath.

Your hand called out for mine,
like a bird looks for food,
like dried-out grass craves rain,
I gave my hand, although you slept,
you intertwined your palm in mine
tenderly and lightly.

Burnt by you into ashes
I got used to the quivering of eyes.
In love with you — in a swampy mire,
in your love — in the heavenly heights.
And in the lines of fate and life
our sweat trickled down.

From the wind the censer smoke
entered the open window.
And birds walked on the tables
and drank our wine.

I lost my matches.
I lost the box, I say.
I lost the feeling of frailty,
the fatality of being.
Insolent as a weed,
I stand in the wet wind.
Happiness, how huge you are.
Where can I hide you?
I have no sense of cold or slush.
The shroud of the wind,
the mist and snow don’t reach me.

Something crumbles in my hands.
It seems to be winter:
it rages, but cannot be heard,
like a silent film.
I don’t take it to heart.
I will not learn to do so.
I want so to accept it,
but my heart, like that puppy,
sits foolishly in the corner,
in the puddle on the floor.
It licks its belly or scratches
its cheekbone.

Heart, where are you, what are you?
Are you nowhere?
I don’t know your beating,
I don’t feel your heaviness.
Lord, stern God,
how did you not guess,
That I stand here, smiling.
Even that I simply stand.
There is no feeling of time.
Warm, mad, alive,
I see nothing but happiness.
Why do I need so much of it.

Cold, I know, it’s cold.
I know this and cannot
let even an atom
of the black azure into me —
the evening reeking of smoke —
the city in dirty snow —
the deadliness of this heart —
the sound of this wind.
I no longer know
how to pardon or reprove.
What should I ask God for?
Nothing more than a smoke.

If, on the train,
sitting opposite each other,
we press our cheeks
to the frozen glass,
and

we try to join our lips,
a butterfly will be left
on the glass,
and

on our cheeks the pattern
of fingers of everyone
who wanted to know
where we’re going.

I know not what I do,
I talk of love to you.
Red blinking from each traffic light.
Upon this foul and evil night
Continents sink into the deep
How am I supposed to sleep…

Each traffic light is flashing.
I ignore an obstacle to the right,
I ignore entire chapters.
And this book has no end.
In a daze, I drive into the ditch…

There is blinking red… scarlet…
dark pink… fiery…
Like a heart, the cars stop moving.
A pale moon, like a sentry,

the scorched shadow of a willow…
Let them know that I’m alive.

I know not what I do,
I talk of love to you.
You are my dear, my only one,
You’ve been my wife a thousand years.

Robins in scarlet clothes.
Mowers in white shirts.
Pain in work-worn joints.
Burning in maddened arms.

The mowers have taken off their clothes,
their bodies are blue with cold.
Sails have grown upon
the masts of pines and aspens.

I drink the salty juice of fatigue,
I feel no sickness, and no ease.
Groggy, half-asleep I walk
barefoot across the sunset.

If you are barefoot, go and dance,
until your heels are burning.
The mowers, naked to the waist,
burn robins in the sunset.

Stenka Razin
lazily watched the bustle of the bees
bees swarmed around his head
with burnt eyelashes
and honey juice on his skin

the bees swarmed
around his head mounted on a stake

so much like a flower
like a flower on a stem

Boys to the right — to hell with them.
Girls to the left — where the heart is.

The squadron roars to tear an aorta,
the mother brings drink to the hall.

The roasted rooster pecked
where childhood
played, and beat its wings.

We cannot get away from the dead.
Who’s last in line to heaven —
I’m after you.

Sky full of drizzle, thoughts full
of heresy, in a day
or two the mass will be held here

Your eye-socket or jaw
will be preserved
by river slime, a nasty father,
the last refuge.

With every beat of the rooster’s wings
the unknown darkness is revealed.

Mother brings us something to drink,
The pitcher beats, as in a fever,
against the teeth.

woozy
on tired horses
in the scents of uneasy July sun
damp cloth and sweat
we enter the village
the frightened peasants
bring us food
knowing already
that their baron is now
to be hanged
(who yesterday cried:
to the stables! —
and today: wasn’t I like
a father to you!)
hanged by the rib
hanged on the gates

and the uncomprehending peasants
cross themselves and hide
the girls in the haylofts
not knowing that the freedom

given to them
cannot be bought with hospitality
and they do not guess that by evening
the girls will come running in terror
from the haylofts that we set alight
and we will cool them
with buckets of water from the well