Yuri Kublanovsky

For a long time I’ve been a guest at home, not in foreign parts, as if I’m waiting for a ferryboat beside the sparkling water.

And the birds, back from winter migration, bring cock-and-bull stories about the motherland.

To seize the meaning of a line just happens to be harder than extracting herring from a barrel.

Every syllable somehow salty, sour, dreadful, yet beyond all this — there’s a self-assertion of sense.

And I, so long kept out of circulation, find myself looking for connections.

Let the down-and-outers, the vagrants tell me what swans in Stockholm feed on.

And we will share, we won’t conceal, the diet of Venice’s doves and gulls.

And the current attitude toward the fatherland — a test for lice — the choice? jealousy or disgust.

When the stars in the sky are in force, in focus, let them discuss being in the grave,

and when they are unfocused, as if they brushed the lips with radiance, let them chat about that.

And may that cool guy with a bullet in his belly not die thinking of a whore

but, remembering the time he ran down my cat, breathe a hoarse sigh.