Back in St Petersburg
The fog descended and I lost my way
with not even the odd street-name to see
My friends have also vanished in the grey
I shivered I felt like a refugee
In Petersburg the place where I was born
during the first blush of a five-year plan
I trusted that a gentler age would dawn
and 30 drams a day would keep a man
alive until then But the vodka went
much sooner than the slogans in the bar
and all I get now is a regiment
of bugs but no booze in this big bazaar
Back in St Petersburg I quickly learned
that Lenin died and I could tell the tale
and Peter's nightmare visions were returned
across the Gulf of Finland by a gale
I lost my way The fog was very dense
I grumbled just to calm myself a bit
The trench was ready now and I was tense
my Tommy-gun and I where shall we sit
The night brought shivers but no silhouette
of Pushkin or a copper could be seen
I strayed like Moses and his desert set
except that I came solo on the scene
And when I made a stop and raised my fist
– a beetroot soaking in a reddish sea
of sour cream and borshch in heavy mist –
I was my own soup only made for me
but stars those rings of fat were not in sight
Another soup was just as thin and sour
where I was plopped as meat a little slight
It was another winter's midnight hour
My saucepan-sooted stint my scary age
how can I climb out you're so slippery
I slide back always on the greasy stage
I'll wear it Lord but it's your cookery
That soup is not bad near the thicker part
My fist is juicy it's the special fare
but Lord don't treat me with a cruel heart
and stab your fork in me with proper care
I spoke these words and stumbled in my tracks
but God was unconcerned or too remote
and as Raskolnikov concealed his axe
I lugged my heavy heart under my coat
The fog was freezing and my instinct said
my great coat might be ripped as in the past
and thought I heard the Bronze Tsar's thoroughbred
stamp straight towards me like a thunderblast
But no one came just shadows of dead strangers
The fog was swirling and I walked again
The street-lamps were as faint as pale hydrangeas
wrapped into sheets of frostbite-cellophane
It seemed I too became a dream as feeble
and faint as twilight in the winter's cold
when blood runs down St-Peter-and-Paul's steeple
God's sacred belly sheds that blood of gold
My frozen feet can't find the way back home
my footsteps carry me to other sites
where Mandelstam is busy on the phone
and in her kitchen Akhmatova writes
The green room Tea scent swirling in the air
On cigar-clouds a chubby putto-man
Blok leaves his wet galoshes out somewhere
and enters slumping on the ottoman
Hodasevich has herrings in a sack
he drooles of Pushkin slithers on the way
The Bolsheviks prepare their last attack
and march on Kronstadt through the frozen bay
This was my dream I dreamt it in the street
it was bestowed upon me by the frost
Then friends arrived they helped me to my feet
and took me home alive but only just
Translation: March 2003
Translated by Peter Zollman