Depiction of Achilles at Patroclus’s Bonfire

Arkadii Dragomoshchenko
translated by Anna and Alex Halberstadt

In vein…  The Sun is leaving.  Soon a breeze will begin to blow softly from the sea and it will refresh the eyes, that look like coals or like wild boar’s meat, billowing smoke, like a rag, “soaked in wine.”  Remember?
In one instant, by moving the shaft of a spear beyond the elbow, with already darkened and wet copper to rip open the stomach up to the very throat, where the snore is frozen, to the crotch with tics stuck to it.  And the roar has been spreading in the fins of spurs.
Smell of blood.  Growing beautifully from the sound of the ribs being torn apart, oblivious to sin, mixing with morels, the scent of thyme.  Dryness was irritating the throat after a long run, and tendons were aching under the plectrum of pain.  Perspiration was running down the backs of the ones, that had been not so lucky, following the dogs, that were spreading themselves flat, merging with oaks rumbling, boiling with a thunderstorm approaching.  At the sound of thunder,
to rip out the liver in
one stroke.
With torn leaves in a fist to wipe dirt from the hips, knees, stomach in a snowy spasm.  Phthia, honey, remember?—Roads, a strap of the coarsened sandal, moss in low-lying ant-inhabited pastures.
What could remember that, what you had become, in front of my eyes, eaten by smoke?  Slush.  Flakes of soot on Hekkata’s fat lips.
Heroes are burdensome for the gods, their fun with them brief, and, imagine, no cool shade.  Slow is the wine-colored sea.
It does not send us any breeze.
Heat of incarnation destroyed skillfully, multiplied by burning wood, even though it continues the task that goes on for a week, spreading such stink, that your leader, most likely, squeezing a butterfly in a fist, uses another fist to close his nostrils.  It ought to be done earlier, instead of having waited for proper weather. Having waited for flies, the industrious neck of the retinue: they eat the leftovers patiently.  Thus, having avoided swine, you turn into loot for some other spawn.
In other words, run, after the dogs, down the slope,
of a different kind.
Lower.
Simplified so, that a root will not injure your foot.  So plain, that eternity leaks through you, pours, as if into a hole,
and you are not even drowning,
more transparent than a gesture
it’s easier to notice a torch burning in sunlight, than you waving a hand—silent,
invisible
A doll of strange battles, leaking soot.
A metaphor, that has opened its effort.
Silicic embryo of a star in the black crown of smoke.