Ghost Factory

***

By making a leap into the magic numbers
of the flowers on the meadow, fir-trees’ needles in the forest,
by all its beauty sundered from meaning —
a joyful foolish rainbow stretched
borrowing a strip from the sky...

Like a gymnast of the most aerial kin:
to fall, enchanted, backward - thus making an arch-bridge
for
the weightless future to come -

why can’t I live like this?

And the swallows would scurry around.
And to explain - nothing. To — nobody.

Man and Woman

The poems of despair and ire
The punished Adam was writing.

He cursed all gardens,
All drudgeries,
Cynically recollecting the Tree,
Thrashed his wife when he was drunk,
And swore to take revenge on God...

And it was only Eve who was crying...

Cemetery of Bells

1

So once upon a time
His - Majesty - The - Bell -
He was the power - giver
Don-n! . . Don-n! . . Don-n! . .

2

a childhood is a bell
both, by form and content
by its ability to fill completely
(by sound, by whistle, by gesture of a game)
the thirsting void
by! - Don-n! . . by! - Don-n! . . by! - Don-n! . .

3

but come barbarians
and crush The Silver One (-oh! do, please, do, resist!..) -
  “don-t! . . don-t! . . don-t! . .”
“don’t touch,” “don’t move,” “don’t do!”
    “DON’T EVEN DARE!”

4

in a rainbow-less bathroom
he gazes - while showering -
at one and the same spot:
(a millennium ago he reduced
“The Declaration of Independence”
    to decoration of indefendence)
disposed on a toilet water-trunk lid
in a neat rugged pot -
artificial violets are gradually fading;
in the bedroom he sets the alarm-clock
and - before sinking into a
blissful abyss of a daily (nightly) death-rehearsal
checks
- Memento the Forecast! -
checks obediently the storm-window
never recollecting
that he was qualified to tame winds . . .