cities

speaking in tongues
guided by voices

anna glazova

CITIES

translated by mx

 
 

amsterdam

 
 
it's just a green puff
upon the red water
reflecting
where almost Deutsch-like
pawing the ground
the Slavonian girls stand scantily waving adieus
 
 
wiping a casual tear
coming back guffawing near the channel
you drop your weariness off into the water
and under your feet
there forms
 
 
the laid-up brain and the hoof of a
bycicle is moored alongside the wall
the people in nice little garbs immediately
are pedalling with much spirit
 
 
as i'm watching renzo piano from a
boat window rotating around the axis
the people are going to the museum
it scents almost German to me when die Wirtin
spreads Nutella over the withering bread
contracting
 
 
the head is bandannaed in red
yesterday it was like hashish or maybe something
else is scrooping beneath the teeth
yet the water is still in the channels
librating like water
like the Slavs
and the farewell
by train
 
 

barcelona

 
 
the airliner will slap you like a tortilla
into the palm of barcelona
and slipping down along the bundles and plexes of dates
you'll fear, falling, if it's gonna be a cockerel or a hen
as you touch the ground with nothing but brownish slop in your hand
the metro entrance, the checker will shortchange you by a coin with the hole
smiling ola and feel yourself at home ola smiling
 
 
what a frenzied music fits wild in the condensed vistas
at night they pour wine over drums and bang them and like
a bottle of beer beating into a seashore window, in a park
the morning will catch you and slap you with a tortilla
right into the arms of a velvety-tanned lingerie salesgirl
 
 
you won't escape just like that there's no escape ola smiling
simply into the mountains without a gaudi stage set you'll escape
plunge into the briny sea and you'll have a sleepless day:
an aerated and roaring siesta with a coconut smell
tired in the scorching wind you'll crawl into a buckshee movie
and to the southern night and precursory pangs for the here
you'll eat a morcel of farewell from the everest ice on the screen
 
 

brussels

 
 
minor
green
wrapped in one hundred petals of classicism like the sprouts
the tasteless paris of the worst rate
a burgundy raspberry beer in the cafe, to wash down the cream
and chocolate gums
with the beer in the flask in the wooden hand
rested on all four
fingers the fat sculpture everything's ugly
the beer mug for four hands
the subway is called the streetcar
it rides uphill on its fat tyres
taking you through the flat-rubber speech
desperate in the red park you'd feel for a moroccan
warm hand
with unlikely warmth of the wood made hot by a body
you'd be escorted to the corner of an uncomfortable ill-gray house —
be surprised
having bought the ticket for long
drown in the breughel and
be surprised
for long
having sunk into the bidet
of the hotel room with no washstand but we have the water heater
 
 

florence

 
 
the burden is down i'm down with my burden
around the station i wait when my mind weaves
firenze with florence with a floriated pampre
it grows over and in the face of delle fiore
uffizi the face of a tourist falls off like an
unneedful seed dropping his knapsack and
his canned artichokes into the paddy seedbed.
 
 
wiping my face i steer by the round flank of the brunnelesci dome
looking for the lodestar hotel but here it's habitual to
follow 17 with 666 and 12 with 3. the overgrowing mind
refuses to think of anything else but delle fiore. the flowers. the flowers.
 
 
disburdened in the hollywood star hotel, in the spherical womb
of delle fiore i place my soles on the traverse ribs of the stair
brushing the concrete with my hand and breathing in someone's black hair
the tired feet ahead of you under the skirt she also wants to aspire
away from the hellfire torture i'm looking through coin-size dormer over the city
and slip down twice in my mind along the longitudes of the delle fiore ribs.
 
 

venice

 
 
an enormous clock at the sandy mansion:
the cramped square's bugging out its fisheye
the ponderous sky is squeezed into a narrow frame
and crisscrossed with blue and white laundry over the channel
the laundry smells of fish
the water smells of the lagoon
which smells of the boat
a water taxi
 
 
st. mark's square is interlaced with crabs
and the doges' palace windows with water and fish
and i've been squirming like a tapeworm all day long
in the recta, jejuna and colons
disgustingly white on the food
painted
red
white
and green
 
 
and in the end of the day
without a chance to blow my eggs
i tumble about in the lagoon effluvia
searching for the next fish
 
 

brugge

 
 
brugge is old and red
red and grey
blue and red
the girls in brugge made
with tweezers
(their lips and eyelashes are slightly twisted)
confect bonbons with their hands
and with pincers
put them on a pair of scales
and weigh them
and very carefully you put down
your belgian francs
and they are lifted up by bitty fingers
the dwelling bricks of
the minor gothic are cemented
with the vermeer grout
up to the very frame of the town gate
brugge is red and grey
and pale hazelly
like the filling of a truffle
 
 

samarkand

 
 
golden animals entwist their long uvulae with the spiralled toe cap of
the gilded slipper open to the heels of al registan
(to the blue-green pieces tenderly silken at the tamerlane's grave)
the anthropic dwarf crouching before the maroon brocade
slipsole with his dirty white turban — the hollow loom —
 
 
(this is the siriasis. the three chicken broth for the cramped breast;
some undrilled pearls suddenly strung on my pain — made of silk
concubines in harem pants hebetate in separation and their properties change.
this is happening for the one thousand and first time around — but i'm seven and i remember —
the rag of a harsh cracknel in a grey-haired hand an unburning fire
 
 
my ravings and the female gold and the blue veins of bibi-khanum
the sky's overturned with the kishlak fruit smell overpouring — the orient —
the agalyk has smashed the skies and the temple is cracked with the ray stroke
the cup of broth spilled by the childly fingers over the sickness bed
(springing like a mountain stream scalding the ribs burning the furrow through)
 
 
i watch the blue shadows prancing under my eyelids: the tea-rose in april
high and far is the ceiling over the wisp of the old brittle hair
tearing into my fever with the wool of the voice someone is pouring the
seeds from the dry cantaloupe — the blood renting open
and the black sleep represses the blue one and i peer through the astrolabe crack
till the morning — ulugbek sees the stars.) the dragons sleep in the clay
 
 
under the banian… the slipper liquates. ulugbek dives into the aryk.
and the red hot tandyr rises up in the sky — so's the morning.
 
 

berlin

 
 
a bloated face. with the fust
of the humid jaundiced ash
of the bovey coal the mouth
of berlin will pant right into the face — mine still mine
still the face — how many times
the city you'll say the word alien.
 
 
like a smack off the berlin wall
with the physiopsycholechery
of berlin the dear hungry mouth
will ravage my alien lips:
how many times will i bite and lap up
the cruelly grey
palate over berlin
 
 

paris

 
 
lying prone on the champ-de-mars
paris stretches out her lacy slender leg —
venus in stockings —
red roses from the bright floral
foam of the skirts; it doesn't even matter that the leg is single.
at night she is twinkling with the lights of the champs
with the eyes of the streams (cars under the arc)
one eye is white — the nebula
the other is red — the blain
the in-patient paris is treating herself to the creme
the sky is whipped to the mousse over one arch — with a spoon
and over the other — and straight to the mouth
somehow the gums burst with pus
torn by the baguette crust
with an unlanced abscess inside
paris thrusts out the monticles of her nipples
one is the montparnasse
two is the montmartre
other nipples too
i love you paris
 
 

dresden

 
 
the articulation exceeds the sound.
expletively slamming the call of the fireplace shut
the holed rabble is sent by the mouth of the coal-heaver
where-to-the-sand-filled-corner-to-kindle-coals.
a gritty moon rises illuminating the depthless dune of coal.
the station and the clearly heard saxon accent.
the separated diphthongs eat out the
nasal septum from the left and from the right.
the-streetcar-the-elbe-on-pot-is-sending-towards-prague
the scalding cast-iron-express on the pull-in.
someone is sneezing loudly on the gallery.
the vermeer’s procuress shudders and hangs lopsided
the slime slithers down the splotchy green glass
the heavy rouged look of the light usher
sends the coalers of art to the dark coal-cellar:
the-tra-uma-u-the-el-bea-u-the-traina-u-dacha-u-berna-u-nacha-use
 
 

prague

 
 
st. madness cathedral of vitus
still the twisted kafka haberdashery
the castle like the black skies nightless
and the lights under the bridge
the millstones are soundingly grinding the glittering waters.
the barky church wall is resounding molded into a lens
and the stairs' putting its great steps slowly
coming up to me to the very drop to the blackish green date
it smells of a bus of gas and one look into the basin will feel
the winter buds of turgid flowers and pensively the statue
with a beard a cross and a sword the father and the bird forgive me daddy i'm a bird
and like natural flowers in the mug of dark beer
 
 

newyork

 
 
the rockefeller doesn't hack through the clouds
the empire through the foggy stream of consciousness
the slices of chrysler settle down on its bottom where
covered with the double undercurrent
the sea serpent like a dog the austere milk the pain about you
has coiled up and is licking with its double tongue
 
 
all right, i will take this elevator up to see the sun
who knows what elevator who's the sun who knows
 
 
all right, the non-encounter will cut short near the triangular building
and what transparent looks and skirts say to me: nothing
 
 
ok, i will disappear into the guggenheim womb — let
me be flailed around in a spiral like a stray zoosperm
the surrealists crammed into the walls you stick in
 
 
after the light i will wearily crawl down to the cloakroom
escorted by the monroe-americoe-monochrome grin
wall-size. i carry the serpent tangle in me warm like a dog
has coiled up and is licking with its forked tongue nothing
but the sea no return but the sea no the return
nothing but the ocean with its firm round jellyfish on the hot sand
and the spot is in pain where your pain has been torn from the spot where's the pain about you



non-stop



the mincemeat of mud is
heavy with snow glaze,
the moscow christmas gingerbread:
every morning seems to see
their unclean faces eating it.
dentifriced to the
naked moaning bone -- pale panhandlers
among the crisscrossed dull metals
and steps blended into slides
at frowzy streets
and in the rancid subway through the wheel's circles
among alien touches through
the dead warmth of thawed-out animal skins:
-- no face -- no face -- no face --
 
 

vladivostok

 
 
the velvet of pebbles the glass-dust in the fist
one after another the layers are stripped away from you
anointing the reddened skin with water
one hair by another is sinking into the blue bottom
and the sea moon is raking it up with the pink flesh the needle.
after aquatic currents like a pulsed briny spurt
the long-cast light will be poured over the city
the shore like a cast-down sun of the color of wet pyjamas bottoms
the spleen is sea-sick having rocked in those swimming by a bittering wave
and the oil level will rise the steamship's smoking siren
and is buried in snowbanks the rot among cavities of lights
with the bread and the sea somewhere on the faraway stones of horizon
like a toy airplane clinging to the roots of stone there's vladivostok