The Voice Over

a headless cockerel and it swooped dead through the yard

head lying in the grass

and all the radio stations of the soviet union are speaking

accountant overwhelmed by numbers

nurse  (made it to berlin)

seventeen-year-old nanny

shoeshiner from the next stairwell

geologist recently released from his second sentence

gynecologist

lecturer at the institute of architecture

vasya (who?) from solyanka street

woman from local health inspectorate

twenty-year-old lyodik killed in action

his father, a volunteer, bombed troop train

his mother who lived right up until death

a little girl who will remember all this

relatives from saratov and leningrad

inhabitants of khabarovsk and gorky

and those I have forgotten

and pushkin pushkin of course

everyone round a laden table

ninth of may victory celebration

windows thrown back radio on

victoria herself sitting at the table

singing the blue scarf song singing schubert

as if there were no death

——

so what bounds Russia, said the crippled man

you know very well what bounds it, said the crippled man

and every span of her earth

and every step in her dust

is a step towards border control

across no man’s land

and the sky drawn up close

all the better to gape

oh this place, place, where boundaries are everywhere

everywhere junctions connections between this world and that

every passing on walkways and subways

and the border-guard peering into the still-open mouth

holes and dugouts and pores

through the skin of the country, these doors

through which passers-by

may not descend unauthorized

not a tear duct, nor a shallow well

but a mine in every hole

a deep long shaft

to where the canary me is held aloft

——

I teach straying from I, yet who can stray from me!

this I follows you from here until the hour of death

throbs in your ears till you say “here I stands”

I do not say these things for a ruble or to fill up the time while I wait for a boat

(it is you talking, not I—I is your native tongue

tied in your mouth, in mine it began to wag)

while we sleep, I thinks about you

——

suburbangascompressionworks where the unstable sublimated mass

rises paraglides over paradise or over gas

the compressed is overgrown, but peonies grow abundant as the plucked

——

it is time to explain myself—let us stand up

earth cannot stand

she has no close or distant plans

no sense of her own rightness

she doesn’t pity herself doesn’t answer in answer to

doesn’t lie down doesn’t run

makes no particular mistakes

leaves no person without

earth opens her mouth but not to speak

nor does she stop herself being mired in herself

——

the intricate carved doors of the butterfly

don’t flap forwards backwards so you

can pull your heart from its cavity

and peer on tiptoes over the garden wall

the suite of rooms won’t sway or come apart,

nor will the mezzanine bend and snap

at last vision runs from the garden

says to reason: enough of your crap

and now in the whitest nights—

when light hardly catches its own—

our trial opens in court and takes flight

and marrow courses and teems in the bone

the prosecutor mops his damp brow

pours a thick glass with a hand that shakes

so water scatters in beads on the cloth

a tiny map of the italian lakes

bone marrow, like porridge left overnight,

suddenly singing in full throat

a song of an old life, our old life,

but no more now than a flat joke

as if we weren’t sawdust-stuffed, soap slivers,

splinters of worlds thrown into a pail

and the thick-lipped beer bottles

trumpeted our way

——

transparent pine legs flicker past

like a shadowy borodino battle

moscow like a played draught

slips out of reach  its draw is lateral

there: inseparable, clustered like grapes,

foaming goblets of lilac in the dark

caught in the thin smoke from war medals

mid-bloom, outwinging firework

not holy mother of god! not a dungeon!

but darkling glass in the entrance halls

v-sign smeared on the walls.

but I awoke and went  awol!

I saw the skull beneath the skin

its sockets its machined teeth its seam

not a bonnet but a bauble

the night sickblossom of a bluebottle crown

trotting like guinea hens, zulfiya

zemfira, maria and russIa

run like ink across the meadow

into the open maw of a severed head

roost on the perch in the mouth’s red hollow

but I awoke before we were swallowed

——

the watery world is boiling and burning

its motors begin dully moving and turning

and dust in damp little scrupuli

coats the horse’s muzzle and eye

who rides so late through standing water

it is the father, he holds his daughter

the cart rattles and clatters and shakes

but the child never wakes

hush now child don’t be frightened

the sedge has withered from the lake

the heron calls, the stork has quietened

we’ll get there in the time it takes

languor on the bosom, warm in the womb

trembling like water in a manger

tell the child that dawn has come

now the child’s beyond danger

but deep in the rock where the sediment’s hard

the underground water is born in the dark

and rises up the dungeon stairs

slowly up the legs of chairs

——

summarised

what was said

amounted to

she simply isn’t able to speak for herself

so she is always ruled by others

because her history repeats and repeats itself