by Arseny Tarkovsky

1

I don’t believe in omens or fear
Forebodings. I flee from neither slander
Nor from poison. Death does not exist.
Everyone’s immortal. Everything is too.
No point in fearing death at seventeen,
Or seventy. There’s only here and now, and light;
Neither death, nor darkness, exists.
We’re all already on the seashore;
I’m one of those who’ll be hauling in the nets
When a shoal of immortality swims by.

2

If you live in a house – the house will not fall.
I’ll summon any of the centuries,
Then enter one and build a house in it.
That’s why your children and your wives
Sit with me at one table, –
The same for ancestor and grandson:
The future is being accomplished now,
If I raise my hand a little,
All five beams of light will stay with you.
Each day I used my collar bones
For shoring up the past, as though with timber,
I measured time with geodetic chains
And marched across it, as though it were the Urals.

3

I tailored the age to fit me.
We walked to the south, raising dust above the steppe;
The tall weeds fumed; the grasshopper danced,
Touching its antenna to the horse-shoes – and it prophesied,
Threatening me with destruction, like a monk.
I strapped my fate to the saddle;
And even now, in these coming times,
I stand up in the stirrups like a child.

I’m satisfied with deathlessness,
For my blood to flow from age to age.
Yet for a corner whose warmth I could rely on
I’d willingly have given all my life,
Whenever her flying needle
Tugged me, like a thread, around the globe.

by Arseny Tarkovsky

We made each moment of our trysts
A sacred epiphany.
We were alone in all the world.
Like a feather, but bolder,
You tripped down the staircase, leading
Me dizzy through the lilac
To your estates, through the mirror.

When night came I received a gift;
The altar gates did open,
And in dark, slowly aglow,
Your nakedness arched upwards.
And on awakening? “Be thou blessed”
I said, aware that my blessing
Was impertinent. While you slept,
From its stand the lilac stretched
To touch you with its universe
Of blue; and your eyelids touched,
Became calm, and your hand was warm.

Rivers pulsed within the crystal,
Mountains loomed and rivers roared.
And in your palm you held the orb
Of glass, and slept on a throne
And — God’s my witness — you were mine!

You awoke, and made such changes
To man’s common turn of phrase;
Speech gained such harmonious force
As throats allow, the word ‘thou’
Acquired the new meaning: ‘King.’

Everything on earth was touched.
Even simple things — bowls, jugs –
When hard strata of water
Stood between us, as on guard.

we were taken who knows where:
Cities built by miracles
Would melt like mirages,
Mint was crushed beneath our feet
And birds accompanied us,
And fish leaped in the river,
The skies parted as we watched . . . .

When fate followed our footsteps
Like a madman with a knife.