Это не я 1996
Translated by Genia Gurarie © 1996

IT'S NOT ME: A SELF-PORTRAIT

Carelessly having set the task 
henceforth to do without a mask,
trying to spin two words in phase
    out of my own true face;
home all day long I sit and look
knit-browed into the picture book.
As for the words, the tongue's no foe,
    as for the face, no no.

Here, by the governess, a child – 
quite an angelic babe, and while
dawns in the boy already my
    manner, he isn't I.
There, less an angel, hardly small,
rock-hopping like the king of all
earth –  yet this idler by the sea
    too isn't really me.

Here he again, not I, appears
in Petersburg between two piers,
no longer small, by far no angel,
    arse to the Stock Exchange.
Frozen he waits to hear Neva
speak unto him, "Comment-ca va?"
On roll the waves unaltering:
    Shan't have it, earthly king!

Further, no better.  There is he
cursing himself, but no not me;
clumsy upon one foot he stands
    put in some taiga lands.
Ominous, wild, into his shoe
some virus-bearing tick ran through.
(Are you aware what "tick" imports?
    It is a thing of sorts...)

Not I again –  that other one
bending before a microphone,
stretching his oral opening,
    meaning, of course, to sing...
Take a good look –  feel sure to say
that fellow shall not win the day:
soon from his larynx he will spout
    howling and hurtle out.

Later that night, his cheeks all rose
after the first one-hundred dose...
(Are you aware of "hundred," chum?
    Certainly, that is some!)
But even here, to find in us
similar lines is worth no fuss.
Even alike, this isn't I.
    Stop it; you scholar lie.

That other fellow holds himself
like a dear father, while the twelve
frontier-guards grope down his suit,
    searching from head to foot.
Two with a shepherd stick their snouts
into his baggage, while he notes,
feeling the nozzle of the hound,
    "That dog of yours is sound."

After two days, that other one
tramples the Brooklyn Bridge with moan,
tramples and grumbles sorely, for
    he finds the bridge a bore,
or, rather than "comment-ca va,"
in the fast train Paris-Moskva
mumbles recalling Grand Paris,
    "God, what a trumpery!"

Shot after shot, all haze and clips,
temples and eyelids, chins and lips,
children and fathers, in-laws... fie!
    Which of them all is I?
There in the corner maybe though,
he pressing ice-bits on the brow,
dull all day long who'll sit and crook
    over the picture book.

Maybe, he'll now be heaving sighs
up with my voice, instead of eyes
raising two goggles to the sky,
    "What utter murk, o my!"
Maybe this voice isn't haze, at least...
Well then how shall I treat the beast?
Burn him? Carve out? Forget? Forgo?
    Maybe so, maybe so...