13M34 in English

                1


- Hello! Is this the hospital?
- No, let's suppose that it's the Emergency Services Ministrу?
- Are you telling the truth?
- Call Lida to come, please!
- I don't want to speak to you.
- Forgive me. I didn't mean to.
- What’s more, I’ll pay you
- Have some water, it will make things easier.
- It is empirically proven that...
- There are pills beside the glass...
- Don’t smoke here!
- Stop shouting.
- And how do you get to the bakery?
- Ok, thank you.
- That's delicious.
- Price revolution!!!


You don’t say!

If you open the book, you won't see anything until the light is on above your head.
It is dark.
What do you see when she opens your window? Window to Europe.
She doesn't understand why you love her so much, she doesn't know that's only because of the things she gives you. Material and crazy things.
You don't hear that language of hers and the words they strive to tell you.
Sushi-rolls in GUM and your face looks happy…
Or you are at the doorway and you’re scared?
You are at the far outskirts and don’t know what to do next…
Why, my dear, why do you stay silent, if you want to be human? Say a good word.


                2


I'd like to understand what I’m doing. What is it for, what is “the man” I’m working for. And does it make any sense. Maybe it’s just a joke.
Should I just move on or I can do some exercises all the time, the ones I like and want to do: turn my head left and right, squat down, sway to and fro…
Golden fringe veils my eyes, I can't see the truth any more. If you want to get something from me, take a deep breath and pass by. All the answers are inside you, I don't say a word. If you ask me a question, I’ll do the same; there's nothing left to invent, all the words have been spoken for us.
Almost a quotation: "when nightingales come, parrots fly away". Life is given to the children of God, kissed by the angels, born to create. But why do they seem so deaf afterwards...
Questions, questions. Rhetoric, physics.
I have written so much that I decided to conceal it as deep as I could so as not even I might be able to find it. It doesn't make any sense, does it? Or the idea is just to keep on moving and swimming in our own jug of milk so as not to drown. To be smart frogs!
“M” as status. “M” as the essence of the matter.


                M


    Zeml'anoy val

Infinity, on the one end and on the other?.. Always raining.
Rush through the smells of unwashed bodies… I turn to the boisterous grey-brown walls, pressing us with the atmosphere of Moscow to Kursk escape. Of vodka, newly baked bread and synthetic jam. That's the point where the traces of the progressive-minded and the retrogrades intersect. They are the same, aren’t they? Former factories host three-four new fashionable exhibit centres, a place for the most thinking and ambitious guys.
Here you have to pass through the park of sleeping tramps and under a crumbling bridge, on which green suburban trains run above you. Here you’ll find no art at the exhibitions but you'll probably be offered some drugs.
That's to the left. To Syrom'atnicheskiy.
On the right – to Vorontsovo polye. Bustle and ads: “Let’s roll to Himalayas!” But the silence of the side streets. A weird church, overgrown with grass, ground with no snow. That’s all is old and flows onto Kitay-Gorod. Shadowy people move from the Kremlin towards Kursk… And disappear in my head. I don’t see anybody anymore, because suddenly they all disappear. It's so quiet and lucid, orangely pleasant.

    Kitay-Gorod 

Long parks, trams, love. Daytime, universities, bakeries, so shiny and colourful. Clubs, darkness, “never sleep”, laughter, hostels, pubs...
A passing moment between the abyss and the beauty.

    The Kremlin

Midnight birds pass over your lights and red walls, your domes are golden in the moonlight. I breathe in your smell when you sing me your songs about an autumn night. I walk fast and slowly to catch your rhythm and to feel the moment of history. You know, I feel very cold though I dressed for the weather. I don't sleep anymore, breathe deeply. The wind walks easily into my nose and lungs and belly. The cold stings me somewhere at the waist. I enter Alexandrovsky garden.
Frozen lawns bordered with red-and-white band… It's forbidden to touch the native soil even if you feel very cold. It's created by the God, that's in my heart. It's mine too. It's mine...
Siren, an ambulance rushes along Mohovaya street, I hear it. Oh Lord, let him survive, grant him health. “What are all those torments and sufferings for?” – “For no reason. Just so”. I wonder, how many ambulance wheels has been seen by the road of Mohovaya that's right here beyond Manezhnaya square?
To Manezhnaya, passing a WC free of charge, soap and paper, go up the stairs… Here is Kutafya Tower. Where does its name come from? Kutafya… a sluggish woman. Rather stout and with a crown on her head. Catherine the Great.
And I buy a ticket to the Kremlin, there's only an hour left. I'm carefully examined, my bag and pockets inspected, they look into my eyes. I'm surrounded by walls, painted white, metal detectors and cops. I pass in – green light at the guard desk. A steep rise, and the road leads into the Kremlin. Two years ago it was bright here. And a year ago there was a ballet in the Kremlin Palace.
The gates smell of dampness and silence. Their height makes me a bit anxious and excited. The tops of the wall are M-shaped. Like they say “M is for Moscow”. When I was a child I thought exactly like that, but there are lots of buildings in Italy with such M-shaped carved walls… of the 14th century. Moscow was built by second-rate Italians but so happy we were... My heels get sink in between the stones of the road. My legs hurt to lift, the stars are almost visible in the sky – it gets dark late now. And since 2011we don't adjust our clocks for daylight saving. Happy tower clock.
I enter you, Kremlin.
Your broad roads and squares are criss-crossed by paths of “ordinary mortals” and “powered elite”. Cops whistle to me, “grazhdanochka”, so that I do not overstep the white lines on the ground, but go around. Non-presidents are not allowed to step there. Do Presidents walk here, I wonder? Or just cars with presidents rush by inside? What if this soil wasn't stepped on for a long time? What if my boot was the first one during the whole week and the ground desires its touch…
Familiar wind pushes my hair and a few drops of fresh rain fall on me from the Kremlin churches’ domes. I continue into the park, to the naked trees gone yellow, towards the balcony.
I can see the Moskva-river, it’s a picturesque view, very thin yellow leaves stick to the pavement under my boots. I feel like smiling, lightly leaning on the railings of the old balcony on the side of the Kremlin. Kutafya is far behind me, Mohovaya shouts far in the back, and I feel good watching the Moskva-river.


    Ostozhenka

It’s gingerbready, sugary.
Thoughts about nothing, I always just walk around. You are so motionless and diverse departments for laundering money are in the side streets, it smells of building site but there are only two new houses inside of you… a yellow and a pink-green one.
Pavements are always dry and caf;s are closed.
Just haystacks of the most expensive street.
With such great background, but so quiet. And short.


                3


Mary went on.
Ann went on.
Nikita turned round the corner.
And let us turn back.
Recall our memories for a while.
But there was time when we were thoughtful and sensitive, put our ideas down on paper napkins and dreamt of becoming the great ones, we played games. And now we’re just playing, not knowing what… because nobody has explained the rules. Write at night about nothing, and write nearly nothing at all. No city romance, no plans.
It’s good just to laugh and smile. Because that’s all.
We are the people.
We are the people.
We are the people.
Above all we are people, though we have forgotten it.
For reasons unknown our memory erased the most important things, leaving some slight pencil marks that are not urgent anymore, but it doesn’t follow old news. And I’m about to lose all my fear. :)


                4


"На сра, на сра, нас рано разбудили.
На сри, на сри, нас рисом накормили.
На ху, на ху, на хутор нас послали.
За жо, за жо, за желтыми цветами!
Ах! Как хорошо в краю родном!"*



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* (c) Russian poetry for children (folklore)

Edited by Therese Morley