Очнулся утром... 1992
Translated by Ekaterina Chapiro © 2013

Woke up one morning...

Woke up one morning all in tears. Washed them away. Then took a pill.
Put on an outfit. Headed out. Ignored the taxicab outside.
Not just because I lacked the money. But for no reason at all.
The metro now. All grand and splendid in its marble. The veneer
Is so austere. Skipped off to work, into the agency of gloom.
Half day spent working. Tried to prove my youth and vigour. Then rebelled
Called the director girl a dead fish. Fired forever on the spot.
Tripped in the doorway, clattered downwards. Survived, and healed, got up and left,
Took one more pill. Dragged to an office, in the neighbourhood, nearby.
Made sure to cause an ardent scandal. Was employed and started work.
Half-day spent working, tried pretending God-knows-what. Then left again.
Some twenty minutes before closing visited the local store,
Purchased a fridge on borrowed money, of a fantastic shiny white.
Came home again. Ate one more pill. Broke out in tears and ate one more.
It didn't help. I shrugged it off. Undressed, to bed. Yawned. Fell asleep.
And all — alone. Alone like Earth. Sonofabitch. Like Sherlock Holmes!
    Famous detective, goes the story. Try to understand.
          But we don't want to.
          But we don't want to.

Here we all are, so damn determined, very learned, seeking oil,
Highly religious, truly useless, looking right through everything,
Akin to jelly, spheric, shapely, colour of coffee mixed with milk,
Taxicab-riding. Deep in hiding. Tall and slender like bamboo,
Five-limbed and fingered, lean and limber, rarely tame and not enslaved,
Spreading our noises, ending sharply, with a kind of sickly growl,
Near middle-aged, highly pretentious, lazy, sketched in a rough draft,
Without a blueprint, nor foundation, without a single nut and bolt,
Unorthodoxly neat and picky, more radical than anyone,
Armed to the teeth, bearing conviction, horse-drawn, easy to wind up,
In demi-season and autumnal, oh-so-strange, if not to say —
Near catastrophic, with bravado, tight and packaged, ploughing on,
Weather-resistant, shifty-eyed, dissoluble in acid fluid,
Clapping like thunder, half illusions, of a fantastic shiny white,
Blood-letting, devastating, crushing, alert as if we're stupefied,
Multihexagonal, unlucky, every day wanting to eat,
   New-Testamental, breaded, minty, brass-like, shining gold,
        Extraordinary...
        extraordinary...