This new alphabetic diet.
I ate airplanes, chewed up boats,
Candy canes and cashmere coats,
Munched on desks and dinner tables,
Easels, feather dusters, gables,
Gnawed a harness (right off the horse),
Fed on houses (of course!).
I ate inkwells, jellybeans,
Kettle drums and limousines.
Then I snacked on magazines,
Napkins, oil cans,
Pencils, quilts,
Rubber boots, a pair of stilts,
Tablecloths and tambourines,
Undershirts, vanilla beans,
Waffles, xylophones, a yurt,
And a zipper for dessert.
Yet I didn’t feel satisfied.”
“Yes,” the other termite sighed,
“All these diets are too tricky.
I just eat and don’t get picky.”
Anastasya Shepherd
Faith in ourselves
Grant us faith in ourselves, Creator.
May we find the courage and skill
To become ourselves in full measure.
For if we do not, who will?
Vyacheslav Leikin
To Yu. Brusovani
«Let the dead ones attend to burying their dead», —
A buddy told me, and I just smiled in reply.
And, with that smile, I said to myself: «Why not?
Let them bury themselves, it is worth a try».
A noose, a cudgel, the firefly flash of a blade —
And the eternal peace, the corrupting peace…
But how well, my friend, you pretend that you are alive,
With a longing that is so endless, so full of grace.
Vyacheslav Leikin
'Freedom from all desires…'
This is happiness! These are rights…
Alexander Pushkin
* * *
Freedom from all desires, from passions and regrets;
From saccharine Christmas pills, from serving and from service,
From trysts and from farewells recurring like a dream,
From sympathy to god, from joys amidst the rushing.
From soil and seed and root, from rudder and from oars,
From the lackluster craft that never earned a penny,
From ignorance and spite, from counting and accounts,
Freedom from everything that goads and ties us down.
She's haughty as a saint and jealous as a wife,
Honest as communists killed in the year of purges.
Can we find out at last, what do we need her for,
And what the hell she wants when she herself is freedom?
Why when she speaks, her words are always curt and harsh,
Why with her sightless eyes she gazes so intently,
Why she ties into knots our sinews and our veins,
Forcing us to submit our fortunes to her guidance…
You shook the iron cage, you rammed the fortress walls,
Your vigilant mistrust could not be fooled by cunning,
And yet you did not see how you became a slave,
A sick and dreary slave driven by your own freedom.
Shuffling the ragged deck of doubtful old taboos,
You're straining to create beauty from warped reflections,
