Cats

Alexei Parshchikov
translated by Eugene Ostashevsky

In a factory where they make chloramphenicol
cats                              loiter

one—gnarled
like a woodblock: waterlogged, barnacled
another—thin with an elongated tongue—
a fireman’s hook
and the third—huge like a calm
in the Persian Gulf

they roam about the pharmaceutical factory
licking up pills
between plague and cholera
flu and smallpox
hovering among deaths

the cats circumvent all, kings of connivance
and only croaking acquire a skeleton

here a black tom beams, clawing up soil
he sees himself buried in it

and the white—bedraggled by dope
fleecy like feathergrass
soft heart in plumes

the cats surmise they see paradise
and become its supports
as if they were pulling tarpaulin onto themselves
determined to shake down
an apple tree

this paradise beheld

they will step, uniform and discrete
as mechanics along the wing of an airplane
into nothingness

and they’ll let paradise slip from their paws
and dictators will meet them head on
and crush cats with their jackboots

Nero versus the cat
Attila versus the cat
Ivan the Terrible versus the cat
Saint Lawrence versus the cat
Smetana versus the cat
Katz versus the cat
cat versus the cat
yes, a cat’s karate is nothing against statues of dictators.

It’s Just Like That

A betty’s mouth rotates.  The wind’s proof doubles.
Mesmerizing Boeings.  The cyclopic reveries
of stadiums.  And America doubles
over and b/pounces—all are pleased

with how the canyon oscillates like the rudder
of the Flying Dutchman that surfaces
in the brain of a man dragged feet-first up the
staircase of the tower of Moscow State University.