The First Rays of Dawn

The first rays of dawn

cut through the curtains,

though the glass box of the room,

like the sharp teeth of a circular saw.

The mute magician of daybreak wearing an orange top hat

saws the bedroom and us in it into pieces:

the zigzags of arms, legs. A TV remote, a cup of tea, a book.

The golden plankton of the dust motes

flows like bubbles in a jug of cola,

dances in the stuffy, overkissed air.

Hello, the magic of a new day,

Hello, my love!

We can’t guess what kind of future awaits us.

A lab mouse in a forking labyrinth scratches its head with a pink paw,

but always chooses a well-trodden, familiar path.

Every morning, someone saws us to pieces and makes us whole again,

like golems, like Frankensteins.

The leaden, silvered shoal of fish parts,

letting through the embarrassed predator,

and it can’t kill us.

–

Your hair smells like our sun’s crayons.

I like you like a pebble on which I may step now and again,

knowing that something is hidden under it, something I don’t own.

We know each other so badly.

We are locked in each other

like astronauts in a space shuttle,

and only hours of erotic training sessions

and the chaotic aims: to be happy,

to breed, to dissolve somehow in the mean, foul world,

make us important to each other.

We are an old apple tree

and a wolfhound chained to it.

And our future lumbers towards us

like a fairy-tale ogre,

and I’m not sure whether we should laugh or cry.

(translated by Sergey Gerasimov from Russian)