Guest on a Horse

(Alexander Vvedensky, 1931 - 1934; English translation © G. Veles, 2021)

 

Short of rest,

The horse goes limply,

Froth is dripping from his jaw.

Evening guest,

You’ve now simply

Disappeared on the go.

Night has set,

I can’t be sure,

Things are proud and obscure.

I forget

Of the existence

Of the words, and stars, and sea.

Evening lingers in the distance,

Many miles away from me.

I could hear the horse’s clopping,

Couldn’t understand the talking,

Thought it was a demonstration

Of an object’s transformation

From an ore into a sentence,

Dreams, and grief and luminescence.

Through the doorway

Comes the guest.

Now my pain is numb with chest.

Then the man of all creation

Leans serenely to my side,

Eyes me like reverberation,

With a badge on his behind,

Pointing with his backward finger

To the haze over the river,

Where a fish is running fast,

Like reflection in the glass.

Now the cupboard and the door

Clearly utter:

Horse’s snore.

I was seated and I went

To the table like a plant,

Like a lifeless connotation,

Like a flurry

Or a pest,

To a global convocation

Of researchers and insects,

Hills and meadows,

Rocks and shadows,

Birds and darkness,

Words and light.

Guest I’m pleased,

I’m filled with gladness

That I saw the horse's side.

He was even,

Not a riddle,

He was clear like a brook.

Shakes his mane

The horse in vain,

Says: I’d like some cabbage soup.

I’m this meeting’s moderator,

To the summit I have come.

Teach me how, o Creator!

Said the Lord: it shall be done.

Then the horse turned to the side,

Looking in his palm I tried.

He wasn’t eerie.

I admit

That I have sinned

And for this the Lord has stripped

Me of body, mind and will.

The previous day has come to see me.

In the steam

There was a chill,

In the stream

A jail stood still,

Flowers hosted

Maladies,

Bugs had mostly

Pointless tiffs.

I saw no sense in anything.

God perhaps you simply don’t exist?

Misfortune.

No, I saw it all together,

Day’s unspeaking vase I gathered,

Spoke a phrase as droll as ever –

Wonder likes to warm its heels.

Light arose

And words transpired,

Earth just froze,

The hawks got quiet.

Man became demonic spirit.

In an instant,

Like a trickster,

He completely disappeared.

 

I’ve forgotten the existence,

I again

Observe

The distance.