A Whistle

a bad poem. about bad poetry.

Some poets play organ, and some, violins,
Some have the timpani to rattle,
For others, there are the frets of mandolin,
Or trumpets, for calling for battle. 

But I got a whistle, of bright colored clay,
And awkward are songs that I’m trying to play.
And silly, I bleat, cry, and howl,
A frog, or a tit, or an owl. 

When all grows leaden, turns silent and sad,
When everyone leaves far away-
I’ll go and sit among grasses and sand,
Down by the waves of Galilee

I’ll take my clay whistle and bring it to lips,
The sound will dance in air, breezy,
And I might dream then: my heart is not ripped,
And walking on water is easy...
 

********

Frankly-it’s much better in Russian(in which I wrote it, initially), which can’t be said about every bad poem of mine I tried to translate. Sometimes translation even elevates this bullshit. But not in this case.

Once, it also helped me to get into a very cool program.

I got lazy and wrote it instead of the long essay I was expected to write, by the end of an exhausting exam.

(I just noticed. What is with me- and essays? I’ve stories upon stories about how I wrote/didn’t write some essay.

Maybe it’s partially the reason I really don’t want to write essays now. It’s like I did everything to severe my once strong ties with essays.)

…Long story short, they asked me to come in personally, after-to give me the news that a) I was accepted to this supercool program b) but the program won’t open because just a couple people passed that exam.

They told me a good university has a very similar program, and although I’d have to take the exam again, they’ll personally call the university to recommend me.

But this-now sunk- program was one day a week, and the university one was already two days, with a very different cost attached.

And I had to work….

…Do you remember that paragraph, from a Fazil Iskander’s story, about the moments, when one acutely feels how life, like a river, could have taken another turn, if only you’d follow that turn, only you chose to continue the course?

It’s not as if you think about it all the time, bitterly, but you know there’s no you somewhere, among all those reeds, and you wonder why you aren’t there.

Palpable absence of self from some imaginable river.

That’s what they mean by “basket case”, I thought suddenly. It’s like I could be, say, a baby, Moses in a basket. Or cats. Or somebody else.

  But I’m not Moses. Neither I am cats. “No, Grace, I can see you’re not a dog.”

I’m not even me, because there is no definable “me”. It all starts falling apart, again.

Like that basket, rotting from being too long in the water already, yet somehow, stubbornly, making its way through.

It’s so strange when people ask me, in earnest, with interest: “What do YOU want?”-I become very quiet and look somewhere, where I am not found.

*********

 Dearest everybody,

 All this creeping chemical thing is very untimely. Here, I said it in one sentence.

Thank you for bearing with me, thank you-and again, don’t mind me too much, whether I disappear for a while, or takes me longer to read you, or I suddenly appear, inappropriate and insane, like now.

I’ve tons of people and stuff to take care of, while looking like I’m beautiful, inside and out-when frankly I should be hospitalized, seems more prudent, but hey, aren’t we the Sultans of Swing.

(Only with a whistle.)

Be safe, will you?..

And-just be.

Love,

Chen/April