Heart, and If You Were a Wild Beast, and Parting

Abstract

Heart, and If You Were a Wild Beast, and Parting Anzhelina Polonskaya (bio) Translated by Andrew Wachtel (bio) Heart You need to die,dry up like a spring.Let those who come for waterlap up empty air. You’re a church. Let your bellbe smashed to pieces.Let the passersby at your doorsstand and low. Let the pilgrim entreat youwith a black fingerformed of desert stones.Let the lover receivefrom you nothingbut bitter betrayal. Men had hearts in their chests,but flayed them out. O wild beasts, dumb and fleet of foot,who know everything about traps,about the hunt, whose fur stands on end,here’s a single thick drop in the depthsto sate your thirst. [End Page 120] If You Were a Wild Beast If you were a wild beast, you’d come homeand we’d hare off, avoiding the snares,flouting the lawsof the earth’s surface.We’d run to the ocean,forgetting the names of the very worstlands and executioners.But you’re already dead. And I?I’m like your faithful boat,that never learned the artof being with others.Lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place.Perhaps it’s betterfor those who never saw the ocean.Only an empty vesselcan hold so much grief. [End Page 121] Parting I, we. It’s pouring outside.Alien faces looking in the window.As a parting gift, the lights go out—an omen of the times. And you,slipping on the wet leaves, fallinto darkness following the leaves.“Your hand,” you say, “your hand.”I’m not a doctor in this accursed life,in this kingdom bereft of life.Like a bull at a “fatal corrida”:a muted “we.” What can I do?Our steamy breath’s dissolved in the sky.Like a house moaning for its inhabitants!Who knows when we will meet again—in this world or the other? [End Page 122] Anzhelina Polonskaya Anzhelina Polonskaya was born in Malakhovka, a small town near Moscow. Since 1998, she has been a member of the Moscow Union of Writers, and in 2003 became a member of the Russian PEN Centre. Polonskaya has published translations in many poetry journals, including the Iowa Review, AGNI, the Massachusetts Review, Ploughshares, and Kenyon Review, among others. Her awards include a Rockefeller Fellowship, International Words on Borders’ Freedom (Ord i Grenseland) Prize, and a 2016 Pushcart Prize. Andrew Wachtel Andrew Wachtel has served as rector of Narxoz University in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and president of the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Before coming to Central Asia in 2010, he was dean of the Graduate School and director of the Roberta Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern University. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he translates from Russian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, and Slovene, and his translation of Anzhelina Polonskaya’s Paul Klee’s Boat (Zephyr Press, 2012) was short-listed for the 2014 PEN Poetry Translation Prize. Copyright © 2022 Middlebury College