Dmitry Blizniuk is an author from Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared in The Pinch Journal, River Poets , Dream Catcher, Magma, Press53, Sheila Na Gig, Palm Beach Poetry Festival and many others. Dmitry Blizniuk is the author of 'The Red Fоrest' (Fowlpox press, Canada 2018). He lives in Kharkov, Ukraine.
Alive, alive
The rainy evening
has sealed us
with fluid wax of rain
inside a taxicab
along with the driver and a bag of groceries.
The rainy evening
boasts its streetlamps and illuminated shop windows
it shoves in its bent fingers with massive rings
like a crazy black rapper;
it shakes a heavy gilded chain on its neck:
yo, dude, listen to the freestyle of the street drops!
And I listen and heed to the shower.
I see a man of rain hanging from the roof,
spewing quicksilver from the downpipe.
It's so difficult to believe
that once we used to be fish.
We vanish in the depth of unphilosopher stone.
The diamonds turn into graphite dust.
The monumental, big-boned grand piano of the avenue thunders.
It sags on its crooked dragon's legs.
A passer-by presses the gray keys of the crosswalk.
The headlights snatch from the darkness the keys of the tree trunks
clinging-black like wet dresses.
The night strums us.
The night plays us back.
The night fools around with a waltz of bitten-off fingers.
I wonder, had anyone known before the Big Bang
that we both of us (not counting the driver)
would get stuck in a cab in the middle of the Universe?
Did the divine plan include our love and dinner:
meat and mushrooms, cheese, grapes, red wine?
The god bluffs,
and the royal flush of zodiacal signs is highly suspicious.
The game will last long, believe me. The shower, some jellyfish things –
wet, octopus-like -
lash their arms against the roof and the windows;
the benches shine glossily;
the light jumps up and down like a cornered rat.
I think, I feel you – it means you're alive.
It's a great luck and great happiness to live and to love.
It's a great crime against the stars,
against black holes, galaxies,
space zombies.
You slightly press my hand in the darkness.
Your finger strokes my palm, and my fingers answer –
outside of me – the fingers snuggle, play and kiss each other
like seals on an iceberg.
Streetlights sweep past outside;
they are gray-haired old hags with burning unbound hair;
they curse the slowing rain in ancient witchese.
Dull sinister windows float by,
and the sleek mannequins
look at us with envy in their tense postures.
We are alive, my love
Alive, alive,
we're living bait in this deluge of the world…
(translated by Sergey Gerasimov from Russian)
