ALEKSEI PARSHCHIKOV 727
MUDFLATS
We trudge kneedeep through medicinal mud and never look back,
and the ooze sucks us down and its dead clutch is alive.
Draw a blank here, a joke, a ridiculous sack-race
littering funnels of slime behind us like smokestacks.
As ever, my angel, I love the rustling at dusk,
as ever I will offer you heather and hides,
but this is all just a whim dreamt up by the mudflats,
golden in the morning, wooden as a pipe at night.
Frail stalks and dragonflies seethe with a velvet charge,
no route through the earth or sky, just a tangle of tracks.
Among these sickly waters that heave like a stretcher
there's no bridge or hill or star or intersection.
Just a rock like a thunderhead and both of them similar
to any point in a universe that's achingly familiar.
Just the wrench of a vista heavy as a punctured ball,
just a hole in the ground or simply the lack of a hole.
Translated by Michael Molnar
0
