Vladislav Nekliaev
A SIMPLE SONG
Come to me with the full moon, Tell me a word or two, All the garden will be soon Sprinkled with lustrous dew. Hold your flute, your dappled scarf, Knock on the front door,
PROPERTIUS
Desine, Paulle, meum lacrimis urgere sepulcrum: nempe tuas lacrimas litora surda bibent. Propertius, IV.11 Don’t cry for me, for only The senseless stones will drink your tears, I’ll never see you cry, for tears
DIONYSUS
Somewhere, suspended in facetless space, The vine is spiralling, shown in the distance, with loosened hair: The farther the eye is, the quicker, the faster it is moving, As if all this length is
EIGHT EPITAPHS
I. You liked your scrolls? — Here they are. The manuscript of your book? — Here it is. Your wine and figs? — Here they are. The portrait of your wife? — Here it
RUN AND WON
When you entered the workshop, I was already here. How many statues, and torsos, and heads! Like remains of the battle that never ends. I am giggling into my beard. Wind’s fluffy plume Is
CAPTAIN WHO VOYAGES NO MORE
Troubled slumbering of things, the curtain blown aside By the gush of the salty wind, the advent of the tide Mixing grains of dry sand, the disjoined palimpsest, The thin wing beating under the
NO ONE EVER COMES
Eupatius thought: “Give him a thousand horses, A thousand bridles of eloquent gold. Wash his feet, feed him well, show him my dancers. If he knows a secret, don’t ask him about it. If
BROKEN CLAVECIN
for every windי’s emotionless blast Brings shreds of feathers with their dance of loss Rotating leaves of faded rainbow-trees And bitter tide of petals outcast The eye undates the images it sees: The clouds
EXCHANGE
Today your things depart. Your faience cup Fell off the table at sunrise and cracked. Your old grey dog did not come up The stairs. I went to look for him, he had died
THE TERRESTRIAL
The air heaving like a wounded fish, Breathing through its purplish sandy gills, Letting in the salty gale, fluttering its Violet fan-like tail, vast, culminating in the distant mesh Of mist completely ripped by
WREATH OF SONNETS
To Jena Woodhouse This way of minutes miserably mixed With their own blinks misunderstood By birds and trees, this eye-born sisterhood, Whose lisps and whispers ripen in betwixt, While nature hastens to complete a
FIRST LETTER
We crossed to the other side, the burgee of the boat Ceased flapping and lagged behind like a dead wing. The visible air seemed neither cold nor hot, The violet clouds flew past us,
SONNETS TO EUROPA
Frost apple on a knotted whirling bough Of dark becoming where it cannot be. So much both for the soil and for the tree, So much for things that are becoming now. You’re melting,