Viktor Krivulin Poems

The poems after poems, they look like poems
and not like poems
there is a smell of threadbare skin from them
of heated metal - well, so what,
...

let it be someone good
who would come to us and say:
it is not scary to live life is shorter
than sunbeam bouncing
...

let it be someone good
who would come to us and say:
it is not scary to live… life - in short -
is not a road but a station
...

sit down dumbass on a hillock
write dumbass this landscape
of Kierkegaardshire your native village
after screaming and fights
...

in the darkness torn by light
are the eyes ever begging
do they roam nude over slippery objects
bumping into faces, corners, holy images
...

it is strange already two wars
have passed, and a third is on its way
but there is no Tolstoy
neither in body nor in nature
...

none shall keep the head in the clouds above the balkans
with impunity — even for two
the earth is not enough, and for a single person
it is indeed like a drop in the bucket —
...