The Meaning of the Sea

(Alexander Vvedensky, 1930; English translation © G. Veles, 2022)

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You can tackle every question

Living in reverse direction

Walking in the woods all day

While you pluck your hair away

When you recognize the fire

In a lantern or a furnace

Say o fire candle’s sire

Tell me what’s your gleaming purpose

Do you mean a thing or not

Where’s the study where’s the pot

Demons are like flies that hover

Over some leftover crumbs

And these spirits now uncover

All their horns and legs and arms

Juicy beasts are waging battle

Lamps are squirming in their sleep

Children play a silent rattle

Women climb a spruce and weep

Universal God is standing

In the graveyard of the skies

An ideal horse is treading

And the forest now arrives

We are watching it in shock

Thinking that perhaps it’s smoke

And the forest flails and rumbles

Apprehensive of the dullness

Whispers faintly I’m a ghost

I’ll appear afterwards

By the mountain stand the meadows

Holding fear on a plate

Montenegrins beasts and fellows

All together celebrate

Music thunders all around

Zyryans romp and dance in circles

Shepherds howl like a hound

Dinghies glide on top of tables

On the dinghies far and wide

Perianths of minutes lie

It’s a total jubilation

So I told you straight away

Valley’s birthday celebration

Or these mountains’ wedding day

We’ll be present at the feast

On a bench of booming sound

And will rattle tambourines

Like the globe they’ll spin around

There’ll be battle there’ll be skies

Or we’ll be ourselves for once

Hourglasses bloom with flowers

People pass around the cup

And the soaring thoughts of ours

Rise up through the fuzzy shrub

Our thoughts and our boats

Our women our gods

Our souls and our earth

Our goblets filled with death

But in spite of this we stated

Such a torrent makes no sense

There’s the sign that we’ve awaited

Playing blithely on the waves

The enlightened hills are throwing

All the guests into the spring

In the river cups are growing

In the river nights begin

Having thought that corpses leveled

Their behinds towards the heaven

Time sea dream are all one thing

We will utter while we sink

With our instruments collected

With our souls and legs in tote

Having monuments erected

Having lit up every pot

On the ocean’s floor we’re trotting

Like a drowned men’s platoon

Arguing with number forty

We will burn to ashes soon

In the meantime years elapsed

Fog went by and nonsense passed

Those who sank towards the bottom

Like a shipwreck long forgotten

In dejection have been steeped

Chattering their wisdom teeth

Some have washed their thews and hung them

On the sea’s unshining tangle

And are blinking like the moon

To the waves’ appeasing tune

Some have said this leg of mine

And the seabed are like one

In a word we’re all disgruntled

We came out back ashore

And the waves behind us grumbled

Getting down to their chore

In a gallop ships went by

Horses sprinted through the green

There were gunshots there was cry

Up above were death and dream

All the drowned have come out

Scratched themselves towards the dusk

Men with means and men without

Sat on drawbars riding fast

All the same the end is near

I summarily opined

An enormous vase appeared

With a flower and a chime

It’s a nifty vase for sure

It is snow and candlelight

It is salt and it’s a lure

For amusement and delight

Universal God I’m here

Even if a little smeared

My resolve my mind my oar

Thank the heavens are no more

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