MANUSCRIPT FOUND BY NATASHA ROSTOVA DURING THE FIRE by Polina Barskova — Translated from the Russian by Ilya Kaminsky I will try to live on earth without you. I will try to live on earth without you. I will become any object, I don’t care what— I will be this speeding train. This smoke or a beautiful gay man laughing in the front seat. A human body is defenseless on earth. It’s a piece of fire-wood. Ocean water hits it. Lenin puts it on his official shoulder. And therefore, in order not to suffer, a human spirit lives inside the wind and inside the wood and inside the shoulder of a great dictator. But I will not be water. I will not be a fire. I will be an eyelash. A sponge washing your neck-hairs. Or a verb, an adjective, I will become. Such a word slightly lights your cheek. What happened? Nothing. Something visited? Nothing. What was there you cannot whisper. No smoke without fire, they whisper. I will be a handful of smoke over this lost city of Moscow. I will console any man, I will sleep with any man, under the army’s traveling horse carriages.
Posted on: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 14:18:43 +0000
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