If There is Something to Desire Read online

  ALSO BY VERA PAVLOVA

  Iz vos’mi knig (From Eight Books, 2009)

  Na tom beregu rechi (On the Other Shore of Speech, 2009)

  Mudraya dura (The Wise Fool, 2008)

  Tri knigi (Three Books, 2007)

  Pis’ma v sosednuyu komnatu

  (Letters to a Room Next Door, 2006)

  Ruchnaya klad’ (Carry-on Luggage, 2006)

  Po obe storony potseluya (On Both Sides of the Kiss, 2004)

  Vezdes’ (Here and Everywhere, 2002)

  Intimnyy dnevnik otlichnicy

  (The Intimate Diary of a Straight-A Student, 2001)

  Sovershennoletiye (Coming of Age, 2001)

  Chetvertyi son (The Fourth Dream, 2000)

  Liniya otryva (Tear on This Line, 2000)

  Vtoroy yazyk (The Second Tongue, 1998)

  Nebesnoye zhivotnoye (The Heavenly Beast, 1997)

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Translation copyright © 2010 by Steven Seymour

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York,

  and in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  All the poems in this collection were originally published in Russia and are copyright © by Vera Pavlova.

  Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  Pavlova, Vera (Vera Anatol’evna)

  [Poems. English. Selections]

  If there is something to desire : one hundred poems / by Vera Pavlova; translated from the Russian by Steven Seymour.—

  1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “This is a Borzoi book.”

  eISBN: 978-0-307-95758-0

  1. Pavlova, Vera (Vera Anatol’evna)—Translations into English. I. Seymour, Steven. II. Title.

  PG3485.A875I37 2010

  891.71′5—DC22 2009022095

  Cover lettering by Leanne Shapton

  Cover design by Chip Kidd

  v3.1

  The author and the translator

  dedicate this book to

  Bill Wadsworth,

  with love and gratitude

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1 “In a nook I write”

  2 “My parents were virgins”

  3 “On his back, on Grandma’s bed, my brother was flailing his tiny legs”

  4 “Fell in love in sleep”

  5 “Mother left early for work”

  6 “Learn to look past”

  7 “If there is something to desire”

  8 “A beast in winter”

  9 “I broke your heart”

  10 “I feel”

  11 “Let us touch each other”

  12 “Tenderly on a tender surface”

  13 “What cannot be swallowed”

  14 “No love? Let us make it”

  15 “Do you know what you lacked”

  16 “Whose face and body would I like to have”

  17 “Why is the word yes so brief”

  18 “Sing me The Song of Songs”

  19 “A girl sleeps as if”

  20 One Touch in Seven Octaves

  21 “The first kiss in the morning”

  22 “Enough painkilling, heal”

  23 “Mom was an axiom”

  24 “Why do I recite my poems by heart”

  25 “I ought to remember: I was four”

  26 “Those who are asleep in the earth”

  27 “Immortal: neither dead nor alive”

  28 “He gave me life as a gift”

  29 “The two are in love and happy”

  30 “Sprawling”

  31 “Begged him: do not fall asleep”

  32 “The hush of the combat zone”

  33 “Lay down”

  34 “Perhaps when our bodies throb and rub”

  35 “I do not mind being away from you”

  36 “To converse with the greats”

  37 “An opaque, gentle, vulnerable day”

  38 “Good-bye, my dear”

  39 “I have wasted such a love”

  40 “Sex, the sign language of the deaf and mute”

  41 “If only I knew from what tongue”

  42 “I am in love, hence free to live”

  43 “Multiplying in a column M by F”

  44 “The journey will be long”

  45 “We are rich: we have nothing to lose”

  46 “When the very last grief”

  47 “Should not regard, but I do”

  48 “Love, a Sisyphus laboring”

  49 “Any housecoat would do”

  50 “I have brushed my teeth”

  51 A Draft of a Marriage Contract

  52 “A weight on my back”

  53 “Armpits smell of linden blossom”

  54 “Man to woman is homeland”

  55 “Memory keeps nothing unnecessary”

  56 “Envy not singers and mimes”

  57 “Inseparable: the parrot and its mirror”

  58 “The serenade of a car siren”

  59 “Writing down verses, I got”

  60 “Teeth dull, veins collapsed”

  61 “Bathe me, birth me from foam”

  62 “You are, my dear”

  63 “A tentative bio”

  64 “I walk the tightrope”

  65 “Old age will come, will arrange books”

  66 A Remedy for Insomnia

  67 “Eyes of mine”

  68 “A cake of soap, a length of rope”

  69 “The sleeping are no mates for the crying”

  70 “ ‘If you want, we can part with a smile’ ”

  71 Self-Portrait in Profile

  72 “At last you and I are one”

  73 “A torture: writing a rough draft”

  74 “We lay down, and the pain let up”

  75 “A caress over the threshold”

  76 “Am I lovely? Of course”

  77 “Where are we? On the sky’s”

  78 “Basked in the sun”

  79 “The matted lashes sprinkled”

  80 Snapshots from Memory

  81 “I think it will be winter when he comes”

  82 “He pissed on a firefly”

  83 “At the piano: my back to the world”

  84 “Thought’s surface: word”

  85 “Against the current of blood”

  86 “My craft is not stringing lyres”

  87 “Cannot look at you when you eat”

  88 “Wrinkles around the mouth”

  89 “Who will winter my immortality”

  90 “Eternalize me just a bit”

  91 “dropped”

  92 “He marked the page with a match”

  93 “Spinner, do not hesitate”

  94 “On the chin, on its edge”

  95 “If only I could elope”

  96 “I spin my destiny myself”

  97 “We would hide behind the house”

  98 “A poem is a voice-mail”

  99 “The voice. The handwriting. The gait.”

  100 “Only she who has breast-fed”

  Acknowledgments

  A Note About the Author

  A Note About the Translator

  1

  In a nook I write,

  you would say crochet

  a fuzzy mitten

  for a child to be born.

  2

&nb
sp; My parents were virgins.

  At twenty-two, even then it was unusual.

  And although Dad was known as a skirt chaser around the women’s dorm,

  he visited women in order to get some food,

  because he was living on his stipend.

  At first he visited Mom also in order to eat.

  And when at the school they started talking about a possible wedding,

  someone slipped her a copy of

  “How a Girl Becomes a Woman.”

  Mom threw it out unopened.

  It was scary for them to make me.

  It was weird for them to make me.

  It was painful for them to make me.

  It was funny for them to make me.

  And I absorbed:

  Life is scary.

  Life is weird.

  Life is painful.

  Life is very funny.

  3

  On his back, on Grandma’s bed, my brother was flailing his tiny legs.

  He’s gonna fall, I thought. But he would not.

  Why isn’t he falling? I wondered. He was flailing his legs.

  He’s gotta fall! Pulled him by the legs closer to the edge.

  Still would not fall. Pulled some more. He was flailing his legs.

  Pulled a bit more. With a horrific crash he fell head down, the dummy,

  and bawled so loud that Grandma came running:

  Who left the baby unattended? — I said: Mom did.

  But not out loud, trembling in the dark under Grandma’s bed.

  4

  Fell in love in sleep,

  woke up in tears:

  never have loved anyone so much,

  never has anyone loved me so.

  Had no time for even a kiss,

  nor to ask his name.

  Now I pass

  sleepless nights

  dreaming of him.

  5

  Mother left early for work.

  Dawn was soiling the sky.

  Virginity? The hell with it! High time.

  The first night happened at dawn,

  on September the first.

  The day before I had promised him,

  and I keep my word. Lover, take

  your reward for the evenings

  spent hiding in crannies and nooks.

  So this is what “being a wife” means?

  6

  Learn to look past,

  to be the first to part.

  Tears, saliva, sperm

  are no solvents for solitude.

  On gilded wedding bowls,

  on the plastic cups of one-night stands,

  an eye can see, if skilled,

  solitude’s bitter residue.

  7

  If there is something to desire,

  there will be something to regret.

  If there is something to regret,

  there will be something to recall.

  If there is something to recall,

  there was nothing to regret.

  If there was nothing to regret,

  there was nothing to desire.

  8

  A beast in winter,

  a plant in spring,

  an insect in summer,

  a bird in autumn.

  The rest of the time I am a woman.

  9

  I broke your heart.

  Now barefoot I tread

  on shards.

  10

  I feel

  your flesh so full

  in me,

  that I do not feel it

  at all

  on top of me.

  Is all of you

  within me,

  a thing-in-me?

  Or is all of you

  outside of me,

  and only seems to be?

  11

  Let us touch each other

  while we still have hands,

  palms, forearms, elbows …

  Let us love each other for misery,

  let us torture each other,

  mangle, maim,

  to remember better,

  to part with less pain.

  12

  Tenderly on a tender surface

  the best of my lines are written:

  with the tip of my tongue on your palate,

  on your chest in tiny letters,

  on your belly …

  But, darling, I wrote them

  pianissimo!

  May I erase with my lips

  your exclamation mark?

  13

  What cannot be swallowed,

  what does not go down the gullet,

  what only stays in the mouth

  and is absorbed by the tongue and the palate,

  what cannot be called nourishment,

  can well be called a wild strawberry,

  a first and a last kiss,

  a grape, semen, a wafer.

  14

  No love? Let us make it!

  Done. Next? Let us make

  care, tenderness, courage,

  jealousy, glut, lies.

  15

  Do you know what you lacked?

  That dose of contempt without which

  you cannot flip a woman on her back

  to make her flounder like a turtle,

  to make the heartless fool realize:

  she cannot flip back on her own.

  16

  Whose face and body would I like to have?

  The face and body of Nike.

  I would fly past all those Venuses,

  would have nothing to do with Apollos.

  With the wind chilling my shoulder

  I would leave behind forever

  the hall of plaster copies!

  17

  Why is the word yes so brief?

  It should be

  the longest,

  the hardest,

  so that you could not decide in an instant to say it,

  so that upon reflection you could stop

  in the middle of saying it.

  18

  —Sing me The Song of Songs.

  —Don’t know the words.

  —Then sing the notes.

  —Don’t know the notes.

  —Then simply hum.

  —Forgot the tune.

  —Then press my ear

  to your ear

  and sing what you hear.

  19

  A girl sleeps as if

  she were in someone’s dream;

  a woman sleeps as if

  tomorrow a war will begin;

  an old woman sleeps as if

  it were enough to feign being dead

  and death might pass her by

  on the far outskirts of sleep.

  20

  One Touch in Seven Octaves

  I

  A light touch with a slant

  like a first-grader’s handwriting, with a tilt:

  you brush away a hair from my cheek

  with a motion vaguely tender, stretching

  my face slightly upward and to the left,

  turning me into a doe-eyed geisha.

  With a slant, yet in a straight line:

  the shortest and the quickest path.

  II

  The trick is in the suffixes, diminutive and endearing:

  to diminish first, then to caress,

  and by caressing to reduce to naught,

  and then to search in panic, where can you be?

  Have I dropped you into the gap

  between the body and the soul?

  And all the while you are right here,

  in my arms. So heavy, so enormous!

  III

  First, cursory caresses, on the surface,

  light, a kind of coloratura: crumbs of

  pizzicato in spots which seemingly require

  a brusque, tempestuous treatment,

  then with a bow across the secret strings,

  the ones that were not touched at the beginning,

  the
n across the non-existent strings or, more exactly,

  the ones we have never suspected of existing.

  IV

  Are my palms rubbing your shoulders,

  or are your smooth shoulders rubbing my palms,

  making them drier, sharper, more perfect?

  The more repetitive a caress, the more healing it is.

  Water slowly grinds stone; caresses

  make the body light, chiseled, compact,

  the way it wants to be,

  the way it once had been.

  V

  Who plays blindman’s buff with those aged twenty,

  hide-and-seek with those aged thirty?

  Love does. Ah, the silky pelts,

  the simple rules, the witless stakes!

  Is it easy at thirty-five to say good-bye to love?

  It is, not for the reasons of great shame involved,

  but because there is no spot more tender, rosier,

  more concealed than a scar.

  VI

  Within a hand’s reach from the foreskin

  is fleshlessness, dense, resonant, boundless.

  Touching, because of its nature, takes part

  in the mystery of disembodiment.

  I am rid of the body, but the shiver stays,

  and so do the pain, the joy.

  The shiver, the pain, the joy have no fear

  that the skin might never reappear.

  VII

  How tender the sensation of ants racing,

  how many shivers in a slow progression!

  Some take no less than a full five minutes

  to get from one vertebra to the next.

  For years a gentle hand has been the trainer

  coaxing them to run from one tiny hair

  to the next, until the finish line,

  until it is madness, until … Hey,

  are you sleeping?

  21

  The first kiss in the morning

  tastes like the first kiss on Earth.

  My waking soul is innocent,

  as I lie next to the tenant