Manuscript Found by Natasha Rostova
During the Fire of Moscow
I will try to live on earth without you.
I will try to live on earth without you.
I will become any object,
I don't care what —
I will be this speeding train.
This smoke
Or a beautiful gay man laughing in the front seat.
The human body is without defense.
It's a piece of firewood.
Ocean water hits it.
Lenin puts it on his official shoulder.
And therefore, in order not to suffer, a human spirit
Lives
Inside the water and inside the wood and inside
the shoulder of a great dictator.
But I will not be water. I will not be a fire.
I will be an eyelash.
A sponge washing the hairs of your neck;
Or a verb, an adjective
I will become. Such a word
Slightly lights your forehead.
What happened? Nothing.
Something visited? Nothing.
What was there you cannot whisper.
No smoke without fire, they whisper.
I will be a handful of smoke
Over this, lost, Moscow.
I will console any man,
I will sleep with any man,
Beneath the army's traveling horse carriages.
— translated by Ilya Kaminsky
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This Lamentable City
poems by Polina Barskova
Tupelo Press 2010
