Stranded In Desert

Footnotes at the top:

1. Written 25 years ago in another language
   and its first part - as it appears here - translated a few years later.
2. Reflecting a view of our present historical era as the Dark Ages in
   modern clothes. (A view mostly unchanged to date.)
3. Kyrilov is a character in Dostoevsky's "The Possessed".

Stranded In Desert

Life of fear and shadows
life of graves and decline.

Elements unaltered by time
time contrapted in a perception of immobility
suited only for eyes entrapping death.

I know this look
it is familiar
even though I lack any certifiable evidence
of its existence
and the accuracy of recognition;
it is related to my aspirations
to the gasping breath of my expectancy
every night when the amplified dark figure
of the warped nose rider does not appear.

Only the gallop extending the distance I hear
and my childhood’s innocence
seated on the  footstep by the iron gate
- a smoocher setting the sun on fire -
melting at a motorbike’s  roar
hand suspended
convulsing at the slightest hint of a nod
by a wind that scatters dust
on my dull expectations
with speed superior to the sounds of my unbearable  befuddlement.

I wait
within an imperative’s silence
whose name I didn’t choose.
Dispersed in every corner of the earth
commanding to uphold traditions and customs
to preserve alive the resurrection myths of Nation
and Civilization.

I touch iron, gold it does not turn to.
I touch electricity, enlightened I am not.

Within the darkness of the poets of deliverance
and the sociologists of hope, I wait.

Let them ascribe a flash of madness in Kyrilov’s eyes;
he perceived, in part, the ecstasy of telos
plunged in delusions of divine metamorphosis.
The author’s cheap directorial trick
to deprive him of credentials he lavishly wasted on others.

Expectancy is space boundless.
Innocence and illusion, deceit and despair
dissect it.

The kept distance between myself and madness
is a thin excuse wrapped around my memory.
Self-restrain without object.

That’s why soul searching I do no more;

every now and then, however,
I lift my feet and interrogate the traces:

-Here you begin.
-Here you end.
-Here you are.

Nothing new to me
not even painful anymore.
And all is stated rather indifferently
almost wearily
because articulation of the relative truth is always passionless

Simply put
just before the beginning I left, just after the end I arrived.
I have no place in my generation’s history
I have no right to its collective  solitude
I am bereft of its myths and fairy tales.

I have, however, wandered within its silence
and still dress in its clothes.

I hide behind the slow rhythm of an old, cherished tango
that conceals my clumsy walk.
Behind dreams, I hide,
of numerous shadows attempting flight.
Behind scepticism and second guessing of choices
seeking their future persistently, I hide.

Time, however, is relative
and it cannot touch eternity
it cannot redeem the solitude and despair
the bitter silence of unrealised desires
the nights when it escorts my flirtations with death...