Father
Bearing on his crown a spinning wheel of glowing gold,
Boring into his mind's eye
Bleeding from his temples

The gift of the waters in four directions.

Whilst Mother
Bearing in her womb
Father's own replacement
Heaved in pains of labor,
Bleeding forth the oceans,

The gift of the waters in four directions.

Brother,
Pained to see the wheel spinning on his aging Father's head,
Was struck by the wounded world and its costly gifts,
Crying loudly against it all:

This wheel is not for me.
This wheel is not for me.
This wheel is not for me.
This wheel is not for me.

And a voice spoke out
From nowhere and everywhere at once.

Who is the wheel for if not for thee?

To @Nils Loc

You are an inspiration to a wallower
To wallow is healthy; but, you choose to not.
This wallower is confused, why don't you wallow too.
Spending time wallowing on these forums, you bring this wallower a smile too,

Ok, I'll stop the horrific attempt at haiku.

My incredible!
Almost edible!
Infrared and, well,
Ultraviolet!
Full of warmth and light -
Gorgeous, timeless sight
Taking mind on flight
To the never-land.

Your blonde hair swings down
On your velvet gown -
In you voices drown,
Like in concert hall.
Unbelievable!
Inconceivable!
Sun will rise and fall
On your gorgeous soul.

My enchantress, you!
Giant eyes of blue
Like a cloud that flew
Over turquoise skies
Singing melodies
Of the galaxies
Ending fallacies
And becoming wise.

Gentle like a dove,
You are queen of love -
I can't get enough
Of your tenderness!
Goddess of the sea!
How you sing to me
How I long to be
In your soft caress!

Cherry blossom, you!
All that's good and true!
Pink and white and blue
Like a carnival,
Like a rainbow, free!
How you spell-bind me!
How I long to be
In your darling soul!

In your love I'll swim
And your voice will sing
An eternal hymn -
No regret at all!
Inexorable!
Most adorable!
Uncontrollable!
Unforgettable!

Insanity - and good reason,
Disgrace - and honor,
All, that brings on thoughtfulness,
Is spilling over -

In me. - All the penal passions
Become as one! -
All images wage war inside
This hair of mine!

The lover's whisper, all around
By rote I know,
Experience of twenty two years
Nothing but sorrow!

But - won't you say - innocently pink
Look I,
I'm virtuoso's virtuoso
In art of lies.

In her let out like a ball,
Caught once again,
The blood of Polish great-grandmoms
Is evident.

I lie because in cemeteries
The grass does grow,
I lie because in cemeteries
Snowstorm does blow...

From violin - from automobile -
From silk, from fire...
From torment that not only me
They all desired!

From pain, that I am not the bride
Of the groom...
From poem and gesture - for the gesture
And for the poem!

From tender boa on the neck...
And how can I
Not lie - when my voice sounds more tender
When I do lie...

By Marina Tsvetayeva
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat

I will send a piece of me to you
Through the thinness of the morning air,
It will penetrate your eyes of blue
And remain inside your heart forever.

I will send a piece of me to you
Over poppies, vilets and roses,
It will vanish in a church's pew
And resurface where your soul reposes.

I will send a piece of me to you -
You alone in all of humankind -
It will disappear from my view
And become a figment of your mind.

I will send a piece of me to you -
Nowhere else I'd send it to instead -
I will tell you to take it - take two -
And retain them all inside your head.

I will send a piece of me to you
Over oceans and over lands,
It will be so supple and so new -
Mold it, mold it, mold it with your hands.

I will send a piece of me to you -
A created piece, a piece complete -
Let it be your own, I say this too,
To just trample underneath your feet.

I will send a piece of me to you
I do not know where, nor even when,
I will send it how, I wish I knew,
To expire and live in you again.

I will send pieces of me to you
In the winter, summer, spring and fall,
And inside your being they'll accrue
Until I am none and we are all.

Under a coxcomb of a milky white
Isaac has built a graying pigeon cage
The crozier irritates the graying quiet
Gradations of the air the heart can gauge.

There's wandering ghost of century-old requiem
Then the grand bearing of the shroud
Genessarian* darkness in decrepit seine
Of week of Lent, before the crowd.

Upon warm altars smoke glows
And then a priest exudes an orphaned cry
A regal man: there is clean snow
On the shoulders, and savage porphyry.

Sophie's and Peter's Grand Cathedrals that withstood
Centuries; warehouses of air and light
Grain hangars of the universal good
And corn-kilns of New Testament.

In the harsh troubled year, not to your side
The spirit drags across the steps in peace,
The wolf's trail of disaster reaches wide
And will not change over the centuries.

Free is the slave who once has conquered fear
And who beyond all measure kept, through grief,
In deep cornbins, in chilly granaries
The grain of utter and complete belief.

By Osip Mandelshtam
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat

On the spot poetry, sent by text to my friend whilst in the taxi, or "spacecraft", as I like to call them:

Race your spacecraft, pickle me nice. Race your spacecraft, egg spinach rice. Race your spacecraft, what's over there? Race your spacecraft, strawberry éclair.

Though it may get me labeled a traitor
And it surely won’t make me rich
In the face of all those who hate them
I announce: I love the French.

For De Tocqueville and Voltaire
For L’Enfant who designed DC
For the fact that without their
Aid the US would never have come to be

For Dumas, Joan of Arc, Exupery
Doctors without Borders, and
For a civilized society,
Low crime rates and beautiful land

For their gorgeous, passionate women
For Cezanne and for Gaughin
For wine valleys, chateux – earth heaven -
For Riviera, Paris, Sorbonne

For their foreign aid to the poor
And diplomatic outreach -
There is one thing I know for sure:
Hear me saying: I love the French.

I'm still bitter about that hundred years war.

Cloying.

Sing to me, my sweet angel,
My elegant angel of love,
Past all destruction and danger
You soar just like a dove -

Over the lapping ocean
And past the mountains green,
Tenderness, warmth, devotion
And softness - like a dream

Soothing, caressing, inviting,
Making soul live and bloom,
In all that's sweet delighting -
Dispelling all the gloom -

Spirit so warm, so tender,
Heart delicate and sweet
In all your paintings rendered
And in your life complete -

Sing to me, my delightful!
Let your delicious voice
Carry the truth, inspire all,
And let the life rejoice

In your delicious beauty,
Your kindness, softness, grace -
You, that the wrong refuted!
You, that despair erased!

Speak to me, my sweet angel!
Speak all you know and see,
Let me be your avenger
Let me set your heart free

Be inspiration, darling!
Be my delight and joy!
Beauty and light imparting -
Shackles of mind destroy!

Carry the truth, and kindness,
And all that's good and true -
With light of soul, end blindness!
With love, dark souls imbue!

Be what love is, angelic,
Tender, impassioned, warm -
Powerful, psychedelic,
Like sunlight - like a storm -

Out of which come flowers
And bring the world to life:
All of the truth, empower!
Make world with passion rife!

You! That they claim unreal -
You are the truth sublime!
All that is good, congealed in
Personhood of you! Shine,

Bring light to those who need it
And others still, caress -
See what is tortured? Heal it.
See what is tender? Bless:

Take the mind through derangement
And make it true - enough!
My angel! My darling angel!
My exquisite angel of love!

-1-

Trial - by misunderstanding,
Spines together - crevasse between.
Look to side - step into exile,
Hands like briars - limp at the seams.

Through seams of nerves, joints and sinews
Blood does not gush - it drips from pores,
And not a man - a man's likeness
And all in surplus - excess of nerves.

-2-

Heart ahead - through body the current flows,
Eyes away - in darkness to look,
Heat, and cold, and in ribs the arrows
Spine on spine beat out a spark.

Hands are touching - just like dry branches,
It is time - to start the game must.
Where eyes play, where the body's rejected,
Where success and failure compare the cost.

Like a sword's stroke - sharp eyes opening:
To make prisoner and take away.
Two lakes - light, two lakes of sorrows,
To freeze - like a boa at prey.

And smoothness, and depth, and silence -
Play of crystals liquefied
Sin original, warmth and light too...
Understanding nonverbal - through the eyes.

-3-

Trial by misunderstanding,
Spines - and if sometime
To turn around in fit of delirium
With landslide of feeling - eye to eye -

But to cease in the blind enlightenment,
Not to fall - only to sway,
And to continue, moment to moment,
And with lips to fall into lake.

By Lubov Sokolovsky
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat

O what a ball! Intensity of movement, nerves and sound!
The hearts were beating in three beats and not in twain.
And ladies were inviting gentlemen
To a traditional white waltz - and took the breath away.

And you, that dance with sorrow together,
Decided to invite that one girl long ago -
But you must always leave to go somewhere -
To help somebody or to ready for a war.

And all, still closer, the more real it becomes,
She, one with whom you had intended to come in,
She comes in order to invite you to the waltz -
And in your temple blood was pounding.

Externally calm in a ball full of noise,
You're given away by the shadow of yours -
She tore, and broke, and trembled in blurry light, as you spun.
Held gently by the hand, and whirling her like mad,
And you could have put her across a knife's blade
So why do you stand, crossing arms, not your own and no one's?

It was white waltz - the end to doubts of unbelievers
And end of childhood consolations, dreams and games -
Today the ladies were inviting cavaliers
And not because the latter weren't brave.

The ladies are called forth in time of ball
And waltz spins heads around, like long before.
But we must always answer someone's call -
To help somebody or get ready for a war.

Whiter than snow is the white waltz, spin now, strive!
That snow does not get interrupted as it falls!
She came in order to invite you to a life -
And you were white - whiter than walls, whiter than waltz!

Wherever you were - in the lyceum, in the tavern -
In palace halls, in school - whatever luck despite -
In Russia ladies were inviting gentlemen
In every age to the white waltz, and all was white.

Dulling the sight, not looking to each side,
Through the despair, silence, quiet, resignation,
The women hurried to come to our aid -
Their hall - the size of the entire nation.

Where you will go, wherever you will fly
Recall the waltz - how you were white - and smile, you'll learn:
They'll wait forever - and from sea and from the sky -
They will invite you to white waltz when you return.

By Vladimir Vysotsky
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat

For you, my ghost.

My sister haunts the servers among the early dead
Each photograph reposted, lost, it should remain unsaid
That a spectacle of grief where no tear graces a head
Is muted fury serving none except the one who owns the thread

I’ve forgotten her face, her name, now silence is her tongue
A bricolage of sorrow speaks for noisy revision
To vandalize and substitute, when all is said and done
Nothing remains except a trace of strangers having fun

If I could find my affectation in this rabble of the sad
I’d ask each and all for quiet and to stop feeding the fad
That subdivides and analyses every word they ever had
Each pattern advertises tombstones for epigraphs

And god forbid in weakness should I drown in sponsorship
You reduced her from a memory to another asset stripped
I wish you’d flayed her in the flesh than ripped and raped her for a tip
that comes in hollow climax whenever we submit

You hold her in a prism that casts remembrance as a ghost
To remind us all for one and all the community you host
Is a movie you created for a lonely symbiote
That works in words for nothing earned when all returns to dust

1.
Hagia Sofia -- here to stop and stare
The Lord has ordered people and the tsars!
Your dome, as an eyewitness once described it,
As if by chains is hanging from the stars.
2.
To all a shining light -- age of Justinian,
When to steal off for foreign gods unseen
Dedicated Diana the Ephesian
Hundred and seven marble columns green.
3.
To what aspired your generous creator,
When high in spirit and in reason blessed,
He laid your features on the ground
And pointed them directions east and west?
4.
The temple shines, in the world's aura bathing,
And forty windows -- triumph of the light;
On sails under the dome the four archangels
Finest of all and basking in delight.
5.
This building will outlast people and ages
So wise and spherical and nobly built
And incandescent weeping of the angels
Will not corrode away the darkened gilt.

By Osip Mandelshtam
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat

We made a bubble of our minds -
Connected over the distance -
Our nerves together intertwined
And in their center, Our Existence -

Heartbeat to heartbeat - will to will -
Passion to passion - and to reason:
Keeping us in there from the chill
In every day - in every season -

And in the middle - in the core -
Were our own centers: In this bubble
They will be there, forevermore,
All times protected from the trouble.

The walls us from the world will keep
And in there we will be together:
In day, in night, in wake, in sleep
Like swallow safe within her feathers.

We made a bubble of our souls -
How hard it was though to sustain it!
To wait all day for you to call -
To keep away all that was tainted -

To keep alive, this heart to heart,
This mind to mind, this soul to soul,
To love you though we be apart -
And to retain this perfect whole:

The mental energy it took
Made me make most of every moment
My spirit tore, my body shook,
And I was in a passion's torment -

And then the bubble's walls concussed
As all its contents lay there scattered:
Eternal, present and the past
Of both the spirit and the matter.

The bubble burst; walls fell apart
And what was thought inside protected -
The throbbing souls, the beating hearts -
Were there, open and dissected.

It was as though the skin was flayed
As centers lay there undefended
I felt destroyed; you felt betrayed -
But something happened unintended:

I saw the beauty that is you,
You saw how much I cared for you,
I saw you from a closer view
And knew indeed that I adore you:

The bubble burst and spilt its core
But yet the dream has not been shattered:
I see you – clearer than before -
And I can love you even better.

Great poem. :ok:

I'll find my love in the ocean
Mermaid-like, she will call
Her tenderness and devotion
Nurturing one and all

Over the crashing billows
Ethereal, she will roam
Reclining as if on pillows
On incandescent foam

On the backs of playing dolphins
In the call of the whales
Raising the sunfish orphans
Petting bass on the scales

Constructing on the corals
Palaces and enclaves
Settling the fights and quarrels
Under and over the waves -

I'll find my love in the mountains
Peaks of the Tian Shan
Her magnificent countenance
Like glaciers reflecting the sun

Basking in wind and sunlight
Clearing the air of dust
From sunrise and until twilight
Making the beauty last

I'll find my love in the tundra
Under the permafrost
Where would she be, I'll wonder
As I am wandering lost

Petting the polar bears
Giving them her sweet light
Lost to all worldly cares
Bringing the Earth delight

I'll find my love in the Congo
In heart of the Abyss
Seeing the fear and wrong and
Turning it into bliss

I'll find my love in the cloud
Splashing in endless blue
Vanquishing every doubt
Making the dreams come true

I'll find my love in the thunder
Rumbling through autumn air
Turning the mind from blunder
And spirit from despair

I'll find my love in the cosmos -
Heart of the Milky Way -
Playing with laws and causes
Turning the night to day

I'll find my love everywhere
And before I die
I'll send her name as a prayer
Into the clear blue sky.

Thank you.

When I am thinking deeply
I see the world in brown:
The colors mix completely
And in each other drown

Creating a commingling
Expressing every view
Through merger and intriguing
Revealing what is true -

When I am looking death-ward
I see the world in black
Where the ungentle shepherd
Leads toward a wayward track,

Where millions of creatures
Feed on the human ghosts
And lawyers, dressed as preachers,
Proclaim the heaven lost.

When I look at the clouds
I see the world in gray:
The hopes and the doubts
In them together play

And through their interaction -
All facets merged in one -
Bring lightning and refraction
Of rays of setting sun.

When I am with my loved one
I see the world in pink
The spirit-cloud above me
Reshaping all I think

Feeling my essence nurtured
And brought into sweet love -
Her heart, like gentle orchid,
Enfolds me in a glove.

When I burn with desire
I see the world in red:
My heart becomes a pyre
Inside which burns my head

And as it turns to embers
Where all things fleshly die,
My spirit soars and clambers
And falls into the sky.

When I am being rained on
The world is orange-clad,
The conic and Ukrainian
Combine inside my head

To manifest in eros
That courses through all life
And, through the trials and errors,
At consciousness arrives.

When I am full of glamor
The world is yellow, and
It turns into a lemon
And into shifting sand

From which, with just some patience,
I make a lemonade
That feeds the respiration
And all of me pervades.

When I am feeling open
I see the world in green
In which I feel and hope and
Know goodliness and sin

And, seeing the whole landscape
From elevated view
Conquer the inner wasteland
And make it bloom anew.

When I am full of willpower
I see the world in blue
And, certain, build a tower
That seeks attainment to

The transcendental wisdom
Of sky and ocean waves
Which holds the truth and freedom
And love that goodness saves.

When I am full of soul
In indigo am I
Feeling the cosmic whole
Expressed within the sky

That reaches earth with wisdom
Of millions of stars
And nurtures me, assisting
The healing of the scars.

When I am in a prayer
I feel the violet light
Reaching my spirit, where
It casts the lies aside -

Burning into the essence
With penetrating rays
And teaching many lessons,
From gratitude to praise -

And after darkest hour
Of darkest of the night
I'm happy as a flower
To see the world in white.

Softly and sweetly Melanie
Is sleeping in the camping tent
She looks delightful, peaceful, free -
What more can anyone demand?

Her hair soft grass, her breath a breeze,
Each gentle movement of her chest
A way to stars, a way to seas,
Another place for birds to nest;

The birds that chirp by gushing brook
And in the gum tree canopies;
But there's no place I'd rather look
Than at my darling Melanie -

As she sleeps softly next to me
Delight of body and of mind
My darling, darling Melanie!
My love, my star, my friend, my bride!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGqexvEtrBo

How ravishing the Russian evenings are
Love, and champagne, and sunsets over alleys
And walks and the amusements in the summer -
How ravishing the Russian evenings are.

Beautiful women, lackeys, servants, there they are
The waltz of Schubert and the crumbling of french bread and
Love, and champagne, and sunsets over alleys -
How ravishing the Russian evenings are.

How ravishing the Russian evenings are
Sunset aflame and shining like a band and
Only the heavens in the blue eyes of the poet -
How ravishing the Russian evenings are

May all be dream, may love be game - wherefore
For you are all my passion and embraces?
But in this world my memory remains of
How ravishing the Russian evenings are.

May all be dream, may love be game - wherefore
For you are all my passion and embraces?
But in this world my memory remains of
How ravishing the Russian evenings are.

By White Eagle
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat

They say that love is blind,
But my love for you isn't:
My heart is with my mind,
My soul is with my reason.

I know why I love you,
And it's completely real:
And unified and true:
I think it, and I feel it:

I love you for your heart,
Your sweetness and compassion,
I love you since you're smart
And filled with joy and passion,

I love you for your warmth
And excellence and wisdom;
For lights that through you course
In every time and season -

For beauty that you are
Both outside and inside,
Because you are a star
In nature and in mindset -

I love you for you will
To help, and for your honor:
For where you've gone and been
And came out all the stronger:

I love you for your grace
And for your dedication
To good deeds; your soft face
And glorious inspiration -

For your resplendent gifts
And what you're doing with them -
And all you are - it is
Completely true to reason:

I love you for your light
And unremitting kindness
All times of day and night -
No, my love is not mindless:

I love you for I see
The wonder that you're truly
And from it comes to be
The passion reasoned fully:

My heart and mind are clear
And doubt they both cast out
And there is nothing here
That's blind or not thought out:

I love you with my mind
And heart and strength and spirit
No, my love is not blind -
It's unified: So feel it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnfsynjSnYA

Lift your lovely eyes up to Christmas heavens,
Conjure up the substance of your dreams,
Before you in my life I was never this happy,
Just for you, as you love them, it seems,
Take these flowers from me.

I'm in love with you to tears,
Every sigh just like first time,
Rather than more pretty lies
This rose cloud, my dear.
With the petals of white rose
I will carpet our home,
I'm in love with you to tears,
I'm in love madly.

In the splendor of your majestic hair,
In the whiteness of your hypnotizing skin
I take a delight, you are the most dear,
All has just begun between you and me.

I'm in love with you to tears,
Every sigh just like first time,
Rather than more pretty lies
This rose cloud, my dear.
With the petals of white rose
I will carpet our home,
I'm in love with you to tears,
I'm in love madly.

By Alexandr Serov
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat

The glorious enchanted she-spider
Is weaving her web again
The lights of the street lamps are wider
And branches are drenched with rain

The light of the moon pours diffusely
Through fog upon the ground,
The headlights of cars shine profusely
And through them the web is wound -

Night cloudy and full of vapor:
Night foggy that pours forth soul
The den of enchanted she-spider
Holds heart and then makes it whole

Caressing, expressing, impressing -
Delirium it will instil
To all of the world's faults confessing
And from it forging Will

Which she will in her web hold
And make it bear great fruit:
Who knows it? Who ever told?
And if so, who could refute?

The glorious enchanted she-spider:
She who makes love from pain,
Beauty and truth beside her:
Fog, and beyond it, rain:

Tender still night, and silent
And in it dwells respite:
Indigo, yellow, violet -
Greet this, the holy night!

Greet she-spider, her the angel
Of beauty and delight,
Greet the intent and danger -
Greet and gain second sight!

Greet her, she's again here
Showing what's warm and sweet,
Greet her, and her revere:
And in her web let's meet -

There within her embraces!
In her web midst the trees!
There where she life entrances -
And puts the mind at ease -

While making it to blossom
And bear the fruit that's true.
She-spider! You are awesome!
And I thank you for you!

Project the mind - it resonates with thunder;
Reject the mind - around you it burns.
Intrepid joy - impassioned restless wonder -
The heart-suffused and life-rich way to learn -

Intrinsic conflaggrations, hard to pity
Or to respect, or even yet to see -
The nature's splendor reaching into city
To render its inhabitants half-free

Until joy drops, and out appears concept
And meaning - this, if only for some!
And from beneath the axioms, a rocket
Ballasts into the space, explodes and is gone

And then - another time, another meaning,
The meaning is constructed from all sides
And forms the structure that informs the seeming
Which then becomes the vision of mankind -

And then come other meanings and perceivings
Constructed like dynamic SQL…
The culture deepens, thickens as it's dreaming
And builds to levels more removed from hell.

i try to kiss
the face behind your words with each sentence
i sit and beg
for the tactile echo of each emote
i hope like pavlov
mouth wet in anticipation for the impossible
the dream of your skin
closer than the tears
which fill the space
between my fingertips and yours

The golden tree, The Tree of Life -
Into its shadow I will dive
And feast upon the blessed fruit
Then dig until the very root.
Inside the root I'll find the seed
And share it with the ones in need:
The tattered hearts and spirits torn -
Between the sundown and the morn,
Between the wisdom and the bliss
Is found the fearsome abyss.
In savage light I'll find the day
And wait for love to burn away
Then conjure till the heart of Is
Corrodes and scatters - then the breeze
Will take away the Adam's feast -
As far as west is from the east
Will be the cause and the effect -
Between the impulse and the act
Between the method and the end
Will stand the rainbow. In the land
Of blind, the one-eyed man is king;
A condor with the broken wing
Will feel the presence of the light
To set himself again to flight.
And as light beams through all the earth
Will be dissolved all remorse,
Will be forgotten all the sins -
And condor with the broken wings
Will soar again, and all the blind
Will see with vision of the mind
The one in all, the all in one -
The life-tree blooming in the sun.

In intimacy there exists a line
That can't be crossed by passion or love's art -
In awful silence lips melt into one
And out of love to pieces bursts the heart.

And friendship here is impotent, and years
Of happiness sublime in fire aglow,
When soul is free and does not hear
The dulling of sweet passion, long and slow.

Those who are striving toward it are in fever,
But those that reach it struck with woe that lingers.
Now you have finally fathomed, why forever
Her heart does not beat underneath your fingers.

By Anna Akhmatova
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat