Feliks Derbarmdiker Heat When I was born, it was hot. When I fell in love, it was hot too. It will probably be hot when I die. Someone I Know Your face I'd like to sign As if on a dotted line With my osculation Your eyes are portals To the acumen within Complex conceptions---are your custom Artificial intelligence---isn't You are labyrinthine Inspiring, though… An atmospheric dance of words Not stifled---they are loosened at the hinges They run like maddened children But somehow build a lucid flow They show placards of understanding They are honeyed Words are brimming with things unsaid Items meant solely for glances You are not impregnable Your kind façade has substance You are humane What to do, what to do? Your face… Cover it… Dotted line… Kisses… Untitled Being near Yet never partaking Same as being dead or alive It's still dangling in the sky Floating over our heads Maybe just one Quite a thick cranium It isn't all that calming To be in purgatory A hell of sorts---but not Elysian fields either Like the ball in Atari Like an innocent Pac-Man stuck between two deaths I look in the rear-view mirror and the fog Becomes solid I wish for a giant spoon Shovel-like tool To stir the murky density To create a life-altering show I am not knowledgeable I'm dull to real facts But I have trust You are most likely to be an adult The telephone talk cracks with maturity I will know what's inside sacks Under rugs Beneath rags Behind thoughts I will know you Toská*         "'Toská' has more sorrow to it than 'sorrow'."                     ---From one of many musings of a                            best friend It is as straight as the ensuing road It goes somewhere---it isn't endless It is that one cannot see the end of a path that The credence of its perpetuity enters As one walks on with the strength to keep his pace The willingness to keep the head in a fixed way The lack of a turn around… As the movement continues The dust does the same Shoes wither with every step Each flake of dirt is heaped upon his brother The figure walks past the thundering skies Past the snow-filled, white skull Huddled under a rusted helmet It was someone's son---a foolish bullet ended his war Despite changing decades, he still lies there Still defensive, still determined to protect A young woman's photograph decays like her old bones Now The "Craw! Craw!" of a crow Still climbing to the treetop Still walking on the road The roundness of sorrow Its fondness for negativity Its pleasure in warlike irony Sorrow has its moments Like the "o" of it all, sorrow contradicts passion Like the big war of an "obscure Schiklegruber" It rolls over, like a saddened hound The uninterested yawn of a cheater, sorrow burrows The grayness of a shaven chin that turns to the nightly wall The creases in the sheets Protected by her emptiness The apotheosis of a lost, never-existing love Is the curve of her back Torched by the lamp on the nightstand The terry sheet almost covering the whole cleft of her buttocks… She sleeps You watch her She breathes You love her She hates You love her She kills You have her She loves You breathe her You surmise a poetic, unending love He becomes your "he" He touches the soul strings of your heart That said grayness That uneven shave you find so appealing He takes the words you let live And puts them on kind, kingly scales They tell me to stop searching They want to bathe me in a world of worlds I cannot move without them But I want to keep myself I want to sleep myself sane I want the friendly touch Before the kiss exasperates me With its ceaseless speech The filibuster of kissing mouths "Do not say anything." Its voice resonates throughout my tongue They tell me that rest is assured It is like sipping---slow but resolute Filling yet unhurried But Bastille's storming---I will lead it With saber drawn and liberating tricolor cocked I will fill sorrow Until it separates itself Until it has its own drinking fountain again Until I hear no more hurried stories About tremendous tastes I will, I will have my bodies I will have my vessels "Resurrected memories of a tender, fierce love"** will stand as my witnesses I cannot predict the weather But the falling snow will come to Southern California * Toská-"sorrow" (Russ.) ** Gwen Williams, "In the Sanctuary of Grief." An Impossibility Kandahar reverberates again With singing missiles And news' attention We're told each thing We're not deceived But is it what we want to hear? The sticky pain of Afghan' Scorches me and every other Russian Like our foe, entangled in the jungle The common Joe, entwined with Vietnam What happened to Ivan? His wife knows nothing of his capture His death His resurrection His demise I hear our "Texecutioner" "Prepare for a long war!" Canned beef, canned beets--- Canned fear? What must we pack for this excursion? Lost loves, a tome of Leaves of Grass? Perhaps our .38s? And what of them? An old man (I watched the footage) Told of a massacre The carnage we repeat is not the same But still the same I plead, unfurl my Old Glory I want our people resurrected But who will do it? Our Tomahawks? Then, who? We All Go Through This Some old lust concealed In a bureau of good tidings I wrestle from the clasp From a claw that catches I open those letters with a twist of the wrist I peek for any forgotten jab at the hard heart And I scan for soothing syllables Curved, correct scribe shit Helps me regress to the unused dream To the virgin memory The remembering of our separateness Our never-ending story With "Fin" being the last of all our words Of good-byes never said Because flowers---preferably mimosa---were never passed From hand to hand---as in a relay race The farewells did not pass Because muffled "Oh, God, I love you!" Strangled by an attacking embrace Was never heard It died---stillborn It died in an apathetic abortion A baby sixteen-year old's love Guilt-free as a new haircut Not guilty as an untouched hand Cheeks red, sighs black And tired poetry Childhood Of Middle U. S. A. The teddy bears of my youth… I never had no fucking teddy bears. The Chance That Got Away In the baritone of night's silence Among the sleeping trees I wait in jeans and sneakers The moon laughs knowingly It knows what I knew It hops from rock to rock While I sit, ass-deep, in ice Lost time like lost hair Cannot be swept and spread again Inching and inching, gnawing and clawing It has rocketed away… Untitled "Good-bye, good-riddance, farewell…" She'll say tomorrow Today I'll let her sleep I'll make amends Beg and implore Just for today "Do Not Hurry To Bury Us" ALEKSANDR ROZENBAUM Dedicated to Soviet POWs captured in Afghanistan, 1979-1989 Don't hurry to bury us We'll return to our land But whom should we blame That our years here are coming on the third That we are hovering here without purpose--- Far from our rye fields. Our mothers still needs us, Those that keep waiting for their children. The years race and my grandfather's aged He has neither forgotten nor forgiven He does not know Ishafar1 But I know Salaspils2 Here's desert-there were forests And a half-century's between us Only---where are you, Red Cross? Wasn't there then---isn't here now3 Don't hurry to bemoan those That have not been found in mountain gorges Between deaf and clay mountains Where our eyes grow red from all foes Don't hurry to bury us We'll return to our land But whom should we blame That our years here are coming on the third… 1Ishafar---a POW site in Afghanistan. 2 Salaspils---a POW site in Latvia during the Second World War, where Soviet POWs were held and slaughtered. 3Just as the Germans did not apply Geneva-type treatment to Soviet POW (as it did for Americans and Britons), so did the Soviet POWs in Afghanistan suffered immeasurable pain. "Road The Length Of Life" ALEKSANDR ROZENBAUM Dedicated to Soviet Army drivers that served in Afghanistan, 1979-1989 Beyond the river, where my house is Nightingales reel resonantly The meadows grow green And trees are on the other side On a hot day, on the cement I will meet my twenty-first spring And the column will crawl between mountains on it again On the cabs of the trucks Stars are painted on Every hour, every moment Is weighted down by this usual highway We measure it with our red soldier blood And with mines that explode under the wheels The gas is to the brim The spare's been checked And so is all the rest Now we have one road, Sergey Just keep to your style Hey, company commander, hurry up and order "To your trucks!"--- The coil will not fail The demon's afraid of the incense1 And if you want to live There isn't a reason for fear We swallow sand mixed with dust It's not far to the "green"2 And once there-it's uncertain And on the other side Mom sends my sister to school And grandma waters the flowers on the 'sill A warm wheel is in my hands And by the feet-the pedals and the gun And on my sides is the land That spits bullets into my face Oh, if I could flood this dry land With tears of those who have lost Their brothers, husbands, and fathers… The gas is to the brim The spare's been checked And so is all the rest Now we have one road, Sergey Just keep to your style Hey, company commander, hurry up and order "To your trucks!"--- The coil will not fail The demon's afraid of the incense And if you want to live There isn't a reason for fear Beyond the river, where my house is Nightingales reel resonantly The meadows grow green And trees are on the other side On a hot day, on the cement I will meet my twenty-first spring And the column will crawl between mountains on it again 1 Russian saying that means something like "God will help us!" 2Any patch of grass, anything showing vegetation in Afghanistan was called "the green." "Caravan"1 ALEKSANDR ROZENBAUM I can't get used to silence still In war, silence is a lie, only a lie On a steep path In a strange land We are leaving for the caravan again Caravan It's victories' pleasure and losses' pain Caravan I await our meeting Caravan Tear this Afghanistan apart Caravan I can't get used to my civvies still Over there it's clear: a friend-and a foe Here's so much folk It's hard to make out people's souls in the fog It's a pity---he isn't here, a friend The caravan has taken him for all time Caravan It's flask of water and without it---death Caravan It means "to make it" Caravan The Qu'ran tells them to kill shuravi2 Caravan I can't get used to my shoulder That's not bothered by my AKM3 That roadside bushes don't have mines That here are no "spirits' bands"4 Only somewhere there Following my steps Someone takes on the caravan too Caravan Caravan It's hundreds of shells that missed the mark Caravan It's salt on the face Caravan On the third toast we'll be quiet--- It's neck or nothing5 Caravan Caravan 1A "caravan" is a convoy of trucks, tanks, etc. 2Shuravi was a Soviet soldier in the lingo of the mujahedeen (rebels). It really means "council," which came with the socialist government that became the object of rebellion. Since "council" is a "communist" thing, then the enemy (in the rebels' eyes) is the shuravi. 3The modernized version of AK-47. 4"Spirits" were the rebels. Similar to Americans calling the communist Vietnamese "Charlie" (from Cong), Soviet soldiers called the rebels "spirits." One theory is that the Russian for "spirit" (dukh) is derived from mujahedeen. A more convincing idea is that they were "spirits" because they were guerillas-and therefore, invisible to a regular army. 5Russian saying that means "It's all or nothing"---the caravan is either you've made it out alive or you haven't. "Black Tulip"1 ALEKSANDR ROZENBAUM In Afghanistan In a "black tulip" With a glass of vodka We silently glide over the land The mournful bird Goes over the border To Russian dawns it carries the lads home In a black tulip Those returning from assignments They're going to the dear land To lie in it To their indefinite leave Torn to tatters They'll never again embrace warm shoulders When into the oases of Jalalabad Collapsing on one wing, our "tulip" would fall We all would curse our duty Again the bacha2 let the company down In Shindand, Kandahar, and in Bagram Again we put a heavy stone on our souls Again we'll carry heroes home The ones that get their graves dug at twenty We need to make it We need to focus If we slip, we'll stumble here too The mountains fire The Stinger™ flies out If we stumble, our men will die a second time And we do not go as if we're home Where there's no war and everything's so familiar Where the pilots see the dead just once a year Where helicopters do not fall from clouds… And we go---grinding our teeth from rage And vodka wets our dry lips Caravans keep coming from Pakistan3 That means there's more work for the "tulip" In Afghanistan In a "black tulip" We silently glide over the land The mournful bird Goes over the border To Russian dawns it carries the lads home When into the oases of Jalalabad Collapsing on one wing, our "tulip" would fall We all would curse our duty Again the bacha let the company down In Shindand, Kandahar, and in Bagram Again we put a heavy stone on our souls Again we'll carry heroes home The ones that get their graves dug at twenty… 1"Black tulip" was the helicopter that transported the fallen back to the Soviet Union. 2A "friend" of the Soviets---any Afghan that would help the Soviet soldiers (to lead them to a group of rebels, to translate, to guide them, etc) for money or some other material reward. The reason the poet says that he "disappointed the company" means that often these people would get their payment---and still , for example, would lead a company into an ambush. 3The caravans from Pakistan brought weapons and other supplies to the mujahedeen. That means that as long as there are caravans coming from Pakistan---the war is not over. "My Friend" ALEKSANDR ROZENBAUM Oh, what a friend I have lost in battle And not forty-two years ago---yesterday Among mountains and sands Where the heat burns all things in sight Charring my grown-up memory Do you hear me, pal? My buddy, we ascended that non-fictional height Under which you now rest Oh, what a friend I have lost in battle All our lives we loved reading about war He had no way of knowing That it'd be my lot To carry his body, under fire, Behind that boulder Far, thirty meters Thirty meters---but how long was that road Between night and day! Sand and rock The sad light of a foreign moon above our heads 'Ten-hut! Farewell, my brother, From now on, you're always with us Forgive me that you're dead And I am only wounded In Karahafghan In Afghanistan Oh, what a friend I have lost in that battle The damn dust would blockade our sight And the personnel carrier burned And in the sky, like a dragonfly, was the chopper And like a voice from the past, the shout, "Forward! Attack!" Like a nerve, it had torn Like a nerve, tightened 'til pain And from the slope, the bullet had met him in flight Sand and rock The sad light of a foreign moon above our heads 'Ten-hut! Farewell, my brother, From now on, you're always with us Forgive me that you're dead And I am only wounded In Karahafghan In Afghanistan In Afghanistan In Afghanistan…