Satyr

I look at him across the shady room,
the pupils of my eyes begin to zoom
right into him and make him large and tangible,
and the totality of space we were divided by
now shatters, breaks apart. A cosy statuette
of a drunk Satyr dancing on his toes and holding
a spiral of a tulip stained with greenish patinated bloom.

It is still early evening, and the shutters fail
to stop the rays of sunset, meek and frail,
from coming into being here, inside,
suppressed by the unimaginable tide
of voices, clangs of lorries, rustle of the leaves
abandoning their trees, the absolute stagnation,
from coming inwards, like a multi-coloured tail

of savage, beastly day. His smile is only shown
by half, because he looks aside, his brown,
well-built and solid torso is encircled, locked
within the spiral of its form which is predestined,
inherent to its survival as is the block of polished bronze:
what is fragile in him is only hinted at by his uneven pose
and by this tulip, a distant goal to which he's drawn.

O lakes of green, how could you change the swimmer
half-drowned, when his round shoulders shimmer,
themselves a wholesome creature sliding well at ease
through muddy waters while the greedy grease
is trying to absorb them and to make them equal
to the rest of the dying body, yet to no avail,
consuming hillocks of the skin that grows slimmer,

but still persists. My presence here is a pure formality
resolving almost nothing, only making lofty
spirals of the cypress-trees seem loftier
with tarnished twigs still twisting with an effort into
the blue indifference of the cloud-ridden height.
His pedestal is shaking and it seems he might
break free from the captivity of what is crafty

in him, to break completely loose, the swimmer can
survive, hug those who now watch him from the ban
of a forbidding distance. The sun is now almost set,
the rays keep hooking onto the slots of the fading shutters,
as if a priest is passing by, the crowd stops and mutters,
inserting little echoes into the flow of the copper light
which spreads upon the floor, like an expensive fan,

and when it has completely covered all the space,
it suddenly gives up, disperses into foam and lace
and simmers down through the crevices of the parquet,
all quiet now. The Satyr is tired, perspiring,
his shoulders fuming like two incense cups before the altar,
so daring, so useless. He couldn't even alter
his own definition by a gesture, a grimace,

in fact, by any motion, by some involuntary jolt
of muscles. We are crashing down, coming to a halt,
disdained, undone, into the depth of unrestrained dominion
of misfulfilment where the seeds shoot arrows of despair,
where petals cling to the forgotten chalices, where he
who knows better knows it for the worse
and every star puts down its hose and drinks the malt,

intoxicated by our ruin, glittering by our darkness,
healed by our inflammation. The tulip lays a harness
upon his arm, and he no longer flies, the aeroplane
of his forsaken head still flashes with the projectors of his eyes,
still probes the clouds with his nose and balances
upon his pricky ears, while his greenish hair surfaces,
consumes the elegant construction by its own opaqueness.

And there he stands, like a light-house showing the way to doom
to the wandering, wayless vessels of my own eyes, for whom
survival is no longer an option, but a matter of procrastination,
delay right on the verge of being swayed without a trace
into the vision, disappearance in what they have so long ago
rejected or improved. Satyr, you go aimlessly, you know
there is no goal in your courageous twist within the gloom

of the space you've lost control of. When you reach the upper stop,
behind which there is no revival, absolutely no hope,
you shall twist backwards, reaching the chalice, then the stem
of your crazy blinking flower, reaching out to the cut
where the roots were once, from where the sap dropped down,
you'll reach your navel, the concentration of the speed
of your futility, greedy, gulping, you'll reach the slope

of your slick hips, the enticing glimmer of decaying metal,
you'll reach the very spot in which your feet couldn't settle
and warmed it, scratched it with the claws so meticulously
shaped by the apprentice of the sculptor, while he himself
was busy with your eyes, and your mighty neck, and your penis
erect like a main-mast on which the eye is hanged,
with a gem of semen drooping from the glans, the petal

of a spring-flower stuck to your scrotum, he was so busy
that he could not see beyond his polished chisel,
he couldn't understand your doom, your unpreparedness,
your total, fabulous dismissal of whatever contradictions
you may encounter as a plain statuette, no longer an idea
or a stem of life, but just a twist of bronze, a block of silence,
a resignation and ultimately a bland dismissal

of your own purpose. While he was scolding a servant girl
who brought him water and distracted him, you had to scroll
all meanings that were there in you, all your anticipation,
alone, forsaken for a second, left to fight your own gravitation,
your limbs turned into some heavy hydras, undefeatable,
denying you this single chance to fall apart, to start afresh
as a rotating spirit roaming through the sun-lit hall

and sucking in the draughts of mellow midday air,
the vine enveloping thick window-frames, the bare
grapes impregnated with the juice of several sunsets,
beyond, the river and the fishing boats, the flapping silken sails,
the dark perfume of fish sold in the market, the kiss
as payment to the pretty young stallkeeper, and yet beyond,
the towers blue-gilt, the silver kites, the rare

meat of the sky incised by a jagged blade of the town's roofs,
you kept all this within your half-turned torso which now moves
and screams to start remembering, to be fulfilled, fulfilled,
within this stench, these echoes coming from outside,
the spurts of strange automobiles, the fumes of factories,
the bowel of the workers gliding out of the open door
at the day's end, disseminating through the trams and public loos,

arriving in the kitchens with the steaming soup,
in the agony of boiling fish. Like a dead woman in the loop,
the moon grins with the incisors of the craters and the bats
scurry about, the winged clots of night, you steam, you fall
within your bitter, bitter readiness to start anew, to gnaw
into the first thin slice of morning, to turn this time completely,
to throw your triumphant face over the purple butterfly of hope.

Вланес, 2005

Сертификат Поэзия.ру: серия 790 № 31256 от 27.01.2005

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