Translated by Max Nemtsov

It all started with St. George’s ribbons in twenty oh seven

it was not you who slept through the air-raid warning and was caught by another one in the archway where they tell you to bend your head slightly hugging you from behind how are you related to those words maybe deported under guard and simon drifts still sawing bits of his boat off for the firewood for its motor why rake up the present during the en-route flight the wheel at the feet turns without touching the ground the absence of a physical contact in the radio helmet the sounds of a run-out recorded over half a century before then it hit the wall

the wet snow tacks the leaves down he’s been studying this wood for his entire life he said I watch everything through the eyes of that cat from the airplane that is a lynx of course but in fact I sigh like a dog with its muzzle on its paws the classmate musician who went away to defend from attack the country that had welcomed him writes about an army cot and the goodness of healthy sleep before it was necessary to mix downers and alcohol now it only takes to pull the toggles before you tilt to a drop and swing again in the air waves of a wing-over before a working night in the morning without driving home to go to the perepechinskoye cemetery to weed the grave for two to find a railroad spike there to remember the hairpin found right after her death an authorized translation he’s been studying this wood for his entire life so that when he decides to get lost in it to be sure no one would ever find him

it all started with St. George’s ribbons in twenty oh seven seven years later the recruiting stations are set near the same subway stops with appeals to enter the paid militia now instead of it they had the contract service brochures at once you seem to be paralyzed but your nerve endings never lost their sensitivity some romantics from “audition” by takashi miike this t-shirt with the print of the international aviation association emblem I was given in oh three after the first parachute drop (I can envision how comic they would look in a night corridor of a rehab with our drop-bottles in hand on our way to the smoking room a “fai” with a bird on me and “professional drone pilot” on him) met to visit the chief doctor in the ward with a basement gallery since that time there has been less of us who saw the spring here mishiko was found dead in the park on a bench we don’t notice bobo in the office while speaking about two-seat paraplanes with engines they can be tried in michurinsk a priest we know has different models marina the nun writes that she expects us in the communion bread room in the novodevichy monastery in five months there’s only more dust in there between the same orange vests and the noise of construction after the words of the holy war I realize it’s now the time to bid farewell don’t even know what I had expected of the last day of august whatever I thought of the robes dry over the ovens everything started much earlier

at weekend nights there’s almost no work birds hop along sand sacks wet through I’ve gathered a collection of poems written in six months read some lear translated by kruzhkov went for smoke breaks with a colleague in her village no one lets children out unsupervised because the neighbor jailed a year ago for dismembering his wife has now come back from the war bemedalled the guard puts his dark folk on lemuria for us to listen the raincloud full of lightnings hangs over trailers

in a corridor of the night emergency in a way everyone is that beaten seaplane with no papers a friend of mine spoke about when I pushed his mid-cabin boat away and jumped awkwardly on the bow with my ribs against the railing the fishing village seemed depopulated a rusted sled on the grass near the cracked boats whatever I look at is a boat or its detail that has been long living its own on-shore life one took root at the slope by the stairs another one is in front of a looming dark house remaining not to retell the news piteously we just came out to buy some cigarettes the string of a sandbar full of mussels is drawn to the island someone saw us from the bell-ringer’s crow’s nest or aren’t we present even here

that feeling when they bought a paratrike but you still have your three night shifts replanting flowers in the wms didn’t understand while reading about someone caught by surveillance cameras when he set z on fire where does this music by the loading platforms comes from until I saw a girl who played the pipe all alone waiting for a commuter train at the station named after the trees that grew from the sagged roof