Venice in winter - Bakhyt Shkurullaevich Kenzjejev

Venice in winter: tourists clump and stomp, some wearing dominos, some in soulful masks. O city,
the drowned maiden’s crystal casket. Passion is not much different from hate. Or is this wrong,

and you are mistaken, stranger? Your companion examines grilles, lingers on bridges. In highfalutin
lands, in lands that lie in valleys, in lands that never change, lies multiplied by lies are dusted over

with earth from graves. Behold our life: you take a sip of it, or spill it, or you roll it like a homemade
eight-millimeter film – moist chalk on pavement, not a single sound. It well may be that I have

misbehaved, played daredevil, lacked in derring-do, like those masked simpletons . . .
from this day on avoid complacency: pour nitric acid on copper plates, lament or sob, get drunk,

but do not be silent, do not debit love from time, nor tide from space. True, next to God
man is an arrogant and naked beast, his aqua fortis and dark countenance notwithstanding,

who will remember “Shrovetide” as a verb, past tense, in great despair, and who will inhale
the flour-sprinkled darkness found in a mirror’s oval, in the carnival’s untruth –

then someone wearing the mask of ibis
will pierce his artery with an engraver’s needle.

(Trans:Steven Seymour)

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