Languor Management

Some (Un)Love for the Undead

Spring of the Dead

Roots start to stir
Trees and bushes.
Snow has thawed from the grass
And crosses.

Beneath the spring moon,
Defrosted bones
Kick themselves awake
And wander the graveyard.

Skeletons crawl from
Cramped, slimy holes.
Men in white outfits—
Some women, too.

The men shake hands
Then withdraw in the lunar garden
Where earthly things
Speak like this:

Rustlings. Sighs. Whispers.
Rattling of bones.
But from the depths of an alley
A mournful mumbling can be heard:

“Madam! I’m afraid
I’ve got some bad news for you:
Alas, the body has decayed—
So there is nothing left of me to love!”

1910 (Sasha Chernyi, translated by me)

A bare exquisite aristocratic elbow

I just finished reading Irina Reyn's ambitious and immersing What Happened to Anna K. I think I enjoyed it more for the different take on the Russian immigrant story than its association with Anna Karenina, but it was great to see how the story converged with AND diverged from Leo Tolstoy's 1873 break away novel .

Cultural Work

Morning. Glasses foggy like cataracts.
The samovar on the table was going off.
Read about Wilhelm’s visit
And suddenly I became terribly bored.

I paced from the door to the window.
Drummed a march on the glass
Then watched how the landlord’s cat
Caught its own tail on the floor.

I whistled. Mindlessly contemplated
The dresser, the bed, "Isle of the Dead."
It was and is boring and stupid.
So I started pacing again.

I picked up Marx. I returned it to the shelf.
Picked up Goethe, and put that back, too.
Yawning, I peeked through a crack and watched
As my neighbor drank hot chocolate.

I put on a jacket and overcoat
And left. I thought, smoked...
Near me, a boy on the bridge
Had fallen under a tram.

Everyone came running. Me, too.
Everyone was shouting. Me, too.
It was hopeless. Indignant, we gave up
And a report was made with the police.

I went to an exhibition. I became angry.
I cursed the lies and lack of talent.
I had dinner. Bored, I got drunk
And swayed like ripe rye.

I dragged myself over to friend’s,
We spoke about cholera, other stuff,
Guchkov, Ariel, DeCosta--
I went home at about dawn.

Morning... Glasses foggy like cataracts.
The samovar boiled over. Besides "Rus"
It was all about Wilhem’s speeches.
I get up – and again I work.

1910

--Sasha Cherny (Translated by me)

A Little After Three in the Morning

In the restaurants, it is already dark and resonant.
A little after three in the morning. The remaining drunks,
Are taxied to their homes.
And the night fog swallows them.
And in the very same manner as the dinner scraps are,
Swept away in the kitchen by a degraded lackey,
The militiamen sweep away the timeworn prostitutes,
From the deserted squares.
Where to go? The way has been forgotten.
It is a little after three in morning and everything is dead,
Except for a single car, spraying water from beneath its wheels,
Speeding off from the Kremlin to Lyubyanka.

Moscow, 1956

--Yuri Iofe. Translated by Andrew Glikin-Gusinsky.

Dynastic politics

I grew up in Newport, Rhode Island's  historic Fifth Ward, a neighborhood whose defining characteristics include: Catholic, Irish, Drunk, Hibernian, Labor, Democrat, Drunk, and the Kennedys. I still remember my grandmother's advice: "When in doubt, vote Democrat."

In 1980, a friend dared me to append an image of Mickey Mouse with his middle finger stuck obsenely in the air to a "Ted Kennedy for President" bumper sticker that was affixed to the back of Newport's Irish mayor's Chevy station wagon. The Mickey Mouse image came from another popular bumper sticker going around at the time that read: "Hey Ayatollah!" Presumably, the mouse was trying to catch Khomeini's attention, and once the Supreme Leader had turned his head to see who had hailed him, he would be rewarded with the the bird--much like he himself had just flipped to the person we knew then only as "The Shah."

So I scooted behind Mayor Harp Donnelly's car and adapted the Kennedy sticker to read "Hey Kennedy!" and stuck the cheeky mouse at the end. But when I had fulfilled the dare, I saw my Camelot-era grandmother staring down at me from the second floor window of our house. She just shook her head in disappointment and waved another kind of admonishing finger at me. In her mind, I was the reason Ronald Reagan soon became president, as well as for the historically high gasoline prices.

But I was 12 years old and sick of the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the Kennedy's and, most of all, tired of being Irish.

Waiting

My love will come,
Will throw open her arms and fold me within them,
Will understand my fears, note my changes.
In from the pouring dark, from the pitch night
Without stopping to slam the taxi door
She’ll run upstairs, across the rotting porch,
Burning with love and love’s happiness,
She’ll run dripping upstairs, she won’t knock,
Will take my head in her hands,
And when she flings her coat on a chair,
It will slip to the floor in a blue heap.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko (translated by me)

Corner office

Despite my corner office with two large windows facing East and South, respectively, I'm afraid I don't like my job much. But the windows do flood the room with enough light that I can legitimatley wear sunglasses in it, which would seem to make my job seem hipper. Wearing sunglasses with a sportcoat and office shirt, however, only makes one look more like a tool--think Tom Cavanaugh's character in NBC's old show Ed--especially in a bureaucratic environment like the one in which I toil. The sunglasses don't conceal the fact that I have a tie stashed in my desk draw "just in case" or that I have three mindnumbing meetings at 11:00,  2:00, and 4:00, respectively. Nor do the shades suggest that though I'm spending my day writing or developing pieces about rats, lead poisoning, and socially transmitted diseases, I'm actually writing a novel at home. Rather, they suggest that I don't like my job much and that what I had suspected were mere allergies may actually be symptoms of conjunctivitis, a subject I will no doubt have to write about next week, provided, that is, I can still open my eyes.

The Arrangement

A hedgehog wandered into our house!
We found it in the morning.
It sat in the corner near the stove
and sneezed because of all the dust.
We approached it, but it rolled up in a ball.
See how it's covered in overgrown needles?
But in about five minutes, it unrolled,
stuck out its paws, then its nose.
Why it came to us,
We don't have a clue:
Whether it was in a fight
or if it just wanted to live with people.
But it's not bad to live with us.
Here's the arrangement:
From now on you will be called
Thistle!
You must not fight with the cat
Or get into bed with us--
Because you're prickly
and you might scratch our skin...
Each day, you will receive
Three saucers of milk,
But on holidays its cheesecake
and four worms.
During the day, you must play with us,
At night, you must catch mice.
If you get sick, I'll tell mommy
To give you soup and iodine.
That's it. Now think it over.
Take all day if you need it...
If you like, stay--
But if not, leave now!

1909 (a children's poem by Sasha Chernyi, draft translation by me)

A charming Amazon

From Sovlit:

The Forty-First by Boris Lavrenyov (1924). A female sniper with Red partisans misses her 41st vicitim (a White officer), then winds up stranded with him on a desert island, where they fall in love. However, the White's essentially selfish, bourgeois nature becomes apparent and she shoots him, fulfilling her mission and her class destiny ....