It’s a city at night.

Wilting stalks of electricity

scratch my cheeks with thorns.

I push the immense bell of the night.

It’s black and has no clapper; it hangs from a heavy yoke fastened to the vault of heaven.

The silence rings out deafeningly: the alarm of the universe has gone off,

but the velvet display cloth is empty.

The night city has already stolen

the necklaces of constellations.

The mycelium of satellite dishes

brims over with hi-tech poison.

It’s not a city anymore. It’s something quite different.

It’s a giant half peeled pomegranate.

Hundreds of its seeds glimmer with a deep ruby light.

With the power of my mind, I fill myself with hundreds of lives.

Handfuls of lives. Pulp of lives.

Like King-Kong, I pull whole families out of the windows,

pull people in bunches, in bundles.

I make my mind do a full split;

I rip the delicate membrane between me and God.

The veins, capillaries, and nerve endings

of hundreds of fates twinkle.

My thought holds its breath

and dives in the slowly boiling tar

of humanity.

I write a poem,

I concentrate,

I stretch myself up

to touch

with my words

the invisible.

God.

Notice me,

discern me

I’m not a flea.

(translated by Sergey Gerasimov from Russian)