Ми віками йдемо неоглядки в багні по коліна,
і живуть мертви хватки його, і ссе трясовина.

Рису не провести, перегони в мішках химородні,
і воронки размножені мулом, як труби Господні.

Як раніше, мій ангеле, в стумі інтимний твій шелест,
як раніше, тобі я носитиму шкури і верес,

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

Flaring in epithelial darkness, as if bitten
by a rabid, magnetic gesture—
all at once—body, converted to hydrogen
all at once—hydrogen under pressure.

Magnetic pressures, within and without,
the bear hibernates in a lush’s cranium.
When the room starts to spin, the bear rushes out
and deposits itself for a glass of uranium.

Halfway into the journey – just puncture me with a compass.
Zero-kilometer, where fabled rivers converge, reversing polarity: drain.
Suppose it a tunnel, at once the air is set tight as a lattice.
Hurray! You are launched from the maw of a soil-based yawn.

Hangnail, dangled all the way down to the switchflow entrails,
there to consult the register: vapors, extralarge rock, and the coiled bands.
You unfasten your jaw at the plywood façade like a conscript,
oil, the armed, double-barreled ram turns the corner: en garde!