Knee deep in mud. For centuries, we have stood where the bogwaters suck.
In the grasp of the inanimate,

there are no straight lines. A sack race is good for a laugh.
And like the Lord’s own trumpets, funnels multiply in the muck.

Once again, darling, yours is a resinous, intimate whisper.
Once again, I’ll bring you pelts and sprigs of heather.

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!

Ти стоїш на одній нозі, застібаючи босоніжку,
і я бачу кущ олійний, а потім — магнітний,
і орбіти предметів, що зчеплені запобіжно, —
хто зіницею поведе, скине ящірку, як молитвою.

Знаходимо її на усіх шляхах
пересмішницею переливу,
букетом груш, що замерз у шипах
температурного зриву.