Secluded Nests

Just look at this road, so beautiful and light,
on the steering wheel lies my dearest hand.
In the backseat — our daughter falls into a sleep.
I don’t remember, just where we were driving…
The songs on the CD just fly on and on:
here’s a bridge over Neva, here’s Crimea and Arbat,
and here, Acapulco’s merciless bay.
Do you remember: just where were we driving?
On the highway I zoomed — above blizzards, above grass.
When you merged onto it from a winged ramp.
We were caught by the common fate of the road ,
it doesn’t matter to where we were rushing.
We both know that years can extinguish the passion.
But they cannot reach these deep flickering lights:
that become only brighter, turn on by themselves
on the routes where you and I are passing.
And all the lighthouses would have become lamps
if not for this profile, if not for this hand…
A refuge? Karma? A habit? Or love?
But, no, it’s a trip. A trip next to you.
It’s even more weightless than a quiet summer night,
The road. Sleeping daughter. The flickering lights.

…I am a boy. Here’s dad. And here’s the Angara.
A fragile boat floats past. Though that is not of note.
The rain is rushing by. The Angara burns up.
And there it is: a rainbow underneath the boat!
The sky is clear today. Only a couple birds.
Once in a while, a cloud. The sun king in his moat,
He plays the royal blitz together with the river
And there it is: a rainbow underneath the boat!
But nowadays, my father, old age has fallen on us.
More seldom are the songs, more seldom are the jokes.
The waters came to change. What is it that remains?
Exactly: just the rainbow underneath the boat!

A small nuisance: rain-filled weekends
A tiny drizzle spills cents on the rivers

We lived next to many, but barely knew a few

… there will be no more metaphors!
Yellow barrels filled with chilled kvas.
Only columns in the school journals
of our Soviet tenth grade class.
There will be just that simple red trolley
that will twist and ring as it rides,
And a girl, nicknamed “the sun bunny”,
who will slip away from my side.

There were no computers at all then,
those, where now that three decades have passed,
worn and dusted, like timeworn coins
we have found each other on the web.
But for now, just an awkward boy
in some poems that were never saved,
her, whose name is “The Sun Bunny”,
will adore from far, far away.

We were primitive in our drinking,
but drank more than just barreled kvas.
And our awestruck eyes never wandered
off the agile girls from phys.ed.
There was the unintentional cleavage,
someone’s (mouse!), a leap and a squeak
I remember—as if they were alive!
Tolik, Shura, and Avetis.

San Francisco, Holon, Chicago,
Montreal… what cities are these?
All on the other side of the crevice
all so foreign to us in those years.
Now a new life has blizzarded in
Some move off, some die, stay—who remains?
We will figure it all out later:
Who has narrowed their heart or their brains.

But for now, things have become better:
Out of colorful bottles we drink.
Kids are older. Our ailments—graver.
All is well. We are alive still.
So perhaps, let us schedule a date:
on that day, from all of our holes
let’s all send out a few sun bunnies
so that winks can soar over the world.

To drive onto the shoulder, walk out to the rocky beach,
to scald the palms with Lake Superior.
To play tag with the mountains in the Colorado landscape.
To hear the last ode of the enamored agave.
Nostalgia for these open spaces will never leave me alone.
And, maybe, one day, I’ll return.

The sun hangs over the sea, tequila in my hand.
Songs in the car- and the flights of the roads start to ring.
The irrepressible strength of books, plays, and sculptures.
A cafe beneath palm trees, the alluring smoke of kabobs…
Nostalgia for this happiness will never leave me alone.
And maybe, one day, I’ll return.

Dad, mom, two grandmas, a wary small boy.
Drunken chatter about the eternal. Unprecedented degrees of love.
But my daughter has long learned to hablar on languages diferentes.
And it’ll only count that, as I hope, I have made her happy,
the one who I received myself for unexpected happiness as a gift.
Nostalgia for all of these people will never leave me alone.
Nostalgia for this life will never leave me alone.
And you know, one day, I’ll return.

My birthday, and my mother takes
Out of the cupboard, pretty plates and bowls.
“Here!” — on this day I get a plane
from the button-sized girl with the yellow bow.
“What should you tell the nice girl right away?”
“Let’s go and play!”

My birthday. The cake’s barely touched.
Your palms… your shoulders… and, “don’t go there!”
The quivers of half words become too much
I think I’ve spent a bit too long on prologues.
What should I tell the girl at times like this?
We kiss.

My birthday. Table set for two.
We are not young, just like these wines.
All of the depths and joys I have lived through
Are in your beloved contours: all my life!
What can I tell my girl these days?
We gaze.

My birthday. It is always loved. I’ve never whined as year by year crawled by.
As my appearance in the living hall
Joined with the simple rhymes of summer light. I’ll croak, — don’t keep the dates of death or grieve,
just throw a party on my birthday every year.

A memory: My daughter was playing
in her vivid child paradise hue
with a doll whose name was Alla,
with a doll whose name was Sue.
How I long to return to the odors
of that summer, to rumple the grass.
To go blind to the diets and pills,
to sleep a wakeless night once again.

… The cicadas shake their tambourines
inside of my half-asleep nights.
And slowly, the stones fall in landslides
in the mountains, my kidneys, and mind.
Such a simple thing: she has grown up now.
But now I can barely grasp too
that doll whose name was Alla
and even the other, named Sue.

No longer is it fun to, gracefully,
throw needles into various haystacks.
We are not wiser, we are simply cooler.
Snowflakes are light and snow is very thick.

But it’s not winter yet. An autumn rock.
The firmament is paved with cobblestones.
An ancient Inca on his furry llama
flies past, not noticing a thing that’s wrong.

The streetlights flicker by, colors of leaves.
All that’s alive is begging to go home
Dive into hay, and strongly pierce yourself
with the dull needle of your memories.

There, weeping, I reach for the arms of mommy.
But, myriad mountains. Road made out of stones.
I am an ancient Inca on a furry llama.
I’ve lives and lives to live before I reach your home.

Can we decide, though we remember everything,
Just what and when we start remembering?

For example, I’d remember a seven year old boy,
who, looking forward to absolute bliss,
begged his grandma to take the trolleys
to ride from end to end, trip to trip.
And summer would live again in memories.
And I would simply ride, no need for a script.

But then, when in a hospital room, tears spilled easily,
an unrecognizing brain, eyes that could not see,
That, I do not want to remember.
How I’d love to learn to set apart, on call,
what is left on the bottom and what is thrown to the shore!

To remember falling in love, but not feeling like strangers.
To remember epiphanies, but not the interruption of logic.
To remember water flowing, but not how it turned into salt.
To remember the steep ones back when they were still gently sloping.

It’s as if I’m outside my own memory.
Longing to enter and disrupt this eternal cycle,
I pound and I pound, endlessly, endlessly
at the circle of leaving trolleys, an aging grandson.

End them now, to hell with those hospital sighs.
Anticipating the trolley fun of a childhood long passed,
to hear grandmother’s such wonderful laugh:
her grandson has come to spend the night!

A small nuisance: rain-filled weekends
A tiny drizzle spills cents on the rivers
In a pause, hastily, a steak grilled on the balcony
Hasn’t it been since birth that with this rain we’ve split
the kilometers of youth and the miles of older years?

We lived next to many, but barely knew a few
Sometimes, of our random encounters, we remember only the details
Sometimes, you’d forget a song, but there are four distinct notes…
Sometimes, to soothe one, it is enough to say “It’s okay...”
Oh, the hedgehogs of my cartoons, the coyotes of my older days!

Women insist that shopping erases all dismal thoughts
Maybe I should wander the kiosks, the rainbows made of lights?
And buy something for the money, that’s been collected by life,
and buy the most for the cents, collected by the rains.

In her head, the spots of white increasing
Things once open start to close away.
From the corners, sour fogs and hazes
floating forward, eating at the memories.
Suddenly, it’s as if a lens has focused:
‘43rd, the Germans at a standstill.
She is seven, and her grandma sewed,
from tatters of fabrics, from some scraps,
a doll - Katie - for her granddaughter’s birthday
Colorful, the size of a small palm,
Fabric silhouette without a face ...
After that, mom returned from the market,
she brought home the remnants of a cake
and - from where? Dear God! - a caramel!
Then a feast, and Katia reigned supreme
I would say, just like Yekaterina,
but czars weren’t remembered in those days.

Now, and she herself has become palm-sized,
elderly, and in an immense armchair
seemingly, she watches television.
She does not want plums, does not want cookies:
long ago divorced with appetite.
Calls out to her husband on the sofa:
“Dear, I beg, could you please bring me Katia?
I forgot to tuck her into bed."
But, coming to senses, almost laughing:
“Oh, my head’s become so dumb these days!
I remembered my grandma’s old doll."
She wanted to say her husband’s name.
Crying, she just couldn’t quite remember.
And two elders gazed across the room
Straight ahead at eyes as deep as fogs.

Sunday is the birthday of her son.
How to bake, remember that old recipe,
of cherry pies or of that little cake?
How he loves them…Katia, dear, please help…

In a frozen, golden age
Daddy’s pulling on my sleigh
Riding towards lands far and wide
I.

Through the yard and through the park
to the snowy boulevard.
Trolleys with their horns are slapping,
Tram cars with their boots are stomping,
It all sparks, and more than all,
Snow.

We were seeing trolleys off
We were reaching the hilltops.
I soared down, my breath a puff
Fluff!

If you take that tram right there
there will be another hill.
Father pulls a little girl
I’ll meet her one day for sure
Soaring down out of the blue
You.

So why now, within our cars
Do we resent the winter months?
Hard to drive, we have no sleigh.
The sun scolds us every day
Bringing from within the snow mounds
Or from within those frozen times
Light.

In museums, libraries, and theater lobbies
Do you remember those women - typically, in their years?
Behind the stands, between the shelves, with tomes or with programmes
So courteous and fragile, pedantic just a shade

They sat upon the stools, they knew all the exhibits
They wore worn and strict suits, which fit them perfectly
They handed us the books with just a little wariness
They greeted all the actors, with just a little reverence.

Will someone post their photo
Or write a little book
Or script a single comedy
To remember all those women,
Those women in their years?

In parks
we argued over books and kissed.
The beer
brought us towards stands and windows.
We waited
for soccer and theater seasons.
The letters —
it’s silly to say! — enveloped and hand-written.
These three guys were alive.
But, recently, through the internet,
I learned they are no longer present.

Vova
stopped by a torn blood clot.
Yura
dissolved in alcoholic mirages.
Tolia…
Couldn’t find what happened to Tolia…
And I
couldn’t even say that we were friends:
parks, beer, soccer, girls…
I don’t even know if I would have remember them,
and now-I do.

Three?
I think, probably a few more…
Maybe,
one of them has already been reborn.
Somewhere
he cries over a lost toy.
Loved now by a completely different family…
But in frames, the same photo remains.
And his daughter presents to his widow
her new young man.

I’ll remember
(maybe, we’re again on the same planet)
Vova —
enormous, dominant, rowdy,
Yura —
Munchausen of his own love stories,
Tolia —
the chief of all school hooligans.
University and school classmates.
As if the zones of youth are no more:
kvass barrels and siphons…

I know:
we do not die, we do not vanish.
To hell!
I am so comfortable here, in this life, with you!
With those,
who feel warmth when I am near.
With those,
with whom I feel warmth when we are together.
Just like those three felt…
The trolley takes us to marvelous parks
for only four kopeks!