and when among the slightly broken turns

by Arkadii Dragomoshchenko
translated by Genya Turovskaya

and when among the slightly broken turns
of the street, when there’s a window, in it a dead man’s linen, chalk
and clement weather, when you recall that it was never.
Then—it’s improper.  Anyway, “then”—the sudden
plummet beyond the bounds of vision, nothing in the retina,
no nabokov, no hades, only the paradise of blindness, the swarm of p/rose
discouraging both you, iridescent one, and me—
vision, love, and further—go there, to where I know
a tree grows cold, the wormwood, and as you go, you go straight and go
among.