The muse— not a whore, and a whore — not a muse,
Though they are often confused.
When they listen with a pure heart,
The muse fortifies the marriage —
Inspires the wife and captivates the husband,

There is no betrayal, ready for sacrifice
Are both the muse and her happy chosen ones —
A persistent, stubborn character
They demonstrate, as if in a dance.

They avidly overcome
All obstacles,
Ignoring earthly rewards,
They seek ideals beyond the clouds.

809-8

@@

God created a machine—
An independent human
And gave her the will
To remain herself.

Having renounced the Creator,
She named herself him,
She hurries to the end
Unsubmissive, insolent.

For the unfortunate one will meet
A ditch around the turn —
The traitress is waylaid by
Her artificial intelligence.

808-9

@@

Circumstances force or attract,
Am I here by chance or on purpose?
Masses of examples around hint:
Nothing arises without self-interest.

I haul for myself — I gather for someone,
I’ll lose it so someone finds it,
What was seized I return from soil to soil
Under these or other conditions.

Meaning in the small and meaning in the great,
In the happy and in the bitter.
Yielding or ambition,
How not to agree — a mission.

807-9

@@

He shot, wounded, took in,
Like a bird with a hit wing.
He took no money for the killed one,
It turns out, — for me, captivity.

Around, beauties in hijabs,
Binoculars for tracking victims,
Among the ruins and through the cellars
I too wander now,
A slave-girl at the warrior’s mercy.

He cares and tends,
Patches up and does not touch.
How long the armed person
Will not free himself from the burden — no one knows.

806-8

@@

They hate poets for the primitive,
For the wisdom of a deep thought.
As soon as he spoke in rhyme
Of happy moments or of sorrows,
How dare he?

An upstart, a narcissist-self-lover,
An insolent braggart, a provocateur.
Better he had kept silent, the truth-chopper,
A mystifier
And a manipulator.

Who needs his observations?
Here everyone is a sage unto himself
Without limit.
Let him shut up, and that’s the end of the matter.

805-2

@@

And let’s add God up.
To the one the people loved,
We’ll add Jehovah, that is the Living One,
And the one who created the Universe.

The God who led Abraham,
With the God of Isa of the Christians,
With Buddha, the God of nirvana
And Allah of the Muslim brothers,
With the gods of storm and swamp,
Of seas, stars and luminaries —

And we shall obtain Sabaoth,
The Essence of Space and Forces.

804-0

@@

A hundred talents to God —
Ten each from the tsars,
Who at the expense of the debt
Of simple workers.

We all carry to the Creator,
We gift or we steal:
The bourgeois and the communist.
The tzaddik and the baptist,
The sectarian and the atheist.

“I live for myself,” I say,
I’ll give away what I’ve gathered,
I’ll weigh it out to the kopeck
To the idol-gods —
However you spin it, the Lord’s to the princes.

803-7

@@

This is not betrayal, that is nature
Calling to take, giving a chance —
Fate’s sincere reward,
If not a salary, then an advance.

Why refuse,
Like one of the loser-doormats?
I live once, and I am not eternal —
I drink happiness with what strength I have.

There will be something to recall in old age,
“Cool granny,” the grandson will say,
Or they will come to curse
For the tragedies of partings.

802-8

@@

Foucault — not God, but the eyes of humanity.
The researcher did not establish the law.
Yet the excursionists still put on airs,
Building the tower of Babylon.

Flights into space, quanta — towers:
“There is no Creator, for we are creators.”
Does a set of clothes
Not belong to the owner?
He merely breathed and we are alive.

Alive, as He is,
Little specks of dust from His lungs,
Look, even the sun rises in a bow —
To Him! He grants a new day!

801-9

@@

They expect lightness from me
Without stoking up the problems —
The question of urgent primacy
We’ll put off for now,
Or let them burn however they burn.
We skip the lesson and don’t go to school.

A break can be taken,
Even to laugh at the trouble —
It is not so alarming,
When for now we rest a little,
And tomorrow roll up our sleeves
And take hold of it firmly.

Woe — to forget the calamity,
To even stop praying,
Better to drink to the brim
Of bitter acid-poison,
Than to end up a traitor.

800-9

@@

A ruler is nobody without a crew.
Without a party, a pack, a gang
Alone he is a worthless weakling,
Even if a Cossack,
Still there’s nothing to call him.

He will surround himself with guards,
Proclaim himself a tsar,
Pay him the tax,
Submit to him and live.

For security he will build a fortress,
In the middle a grandiose palace
Beside a temple, a monastery or a mosque.
As God’s viceroy for the masses
He will put serfs and peasants on the meter
To tend the orchards and kitchen gardens,
And at a convenient chance,
He will send them first to death
To enslave other peoples too.

799-9

@@

Drop me and let me go,
It is not you in my thoughts now,
Why waste a life?
You let go, and I will fall in love again.

Darling, I have found love,
I long for her again and again.
For warm lips. Yours are like ice.
Beloved, we ought to part.

DROP me and realize:
Love harms us bOOOOth,
For us to live together is the family’s pain,
You let go, I will love her.
(Don’t hold on. Let go!)

798-9

@@

Like the other prophets,
Christ did not create,
He explained
The deep Design
Of Life itself,
By the power of Words
Of the Holes of Nonbeing
The disturbed peace,

A flash of Love,
Light and Warmth,
In which burn
Death and untruth.
And scientific thoughts
At first for evil,
As protest, arise,
To glorify the Author tomorrow.

Crucified, he died,
Revealing the Mystery by Resurrection,
Whoever believed knows now
To what the Most High calls.

797-9

@@

If only one could scoop from the night,
Cool the day —
Anomalous heat rages…
Nature does not want
The harmful inspirations
With which man destroys.

It hints and asks:
“Children of the planet!
Come to your senses!
Calm down! Enough!
Dismantle the rockets!
Make peace!

To be enemies
And compete,
To plunder
And seek excessive good
Cease!
Cease
Crossing the bounds!
Start becoming brothers,
Do not kill,
Live,
Climb down
From the tower of Babel.”

796-8

@@

Grandma, where is your slenderness?
The blossom has fallen, spring cannot return,
Beauty was replaced by patience and wisdom,
To bring fruit in old age.

Not everyone will appreciate
Your efforts
To serve the good, to improve the world,
Not everyone will believe
In passionate love
Under the gray hair of wrinkled years.

“Pick and eat, I am glad to give myself,
For that is why the cherry grows in the garden,” —
Grandma explained and reassured, —
“And the tree will bloom again in spring.”

795-8

@@

The body depends on age,
The soul is always young.
Stuffed into a smoldering cage,
It longs for freedom.

It perceives freedom through the bars.
With the help of arms and legs
It tries to play at life.
And who would help it?

The one who also limited it,
Controls the inexperienced movement,
Teaches for eternity and provided a passage, —
God’s everlasting Spirit.

794-9

@@

“They did not love us,
They attacked us,” —
In a fumes hangover
Failed explanations.

Did you not attack first,
To provoke the fury?
The propaganda fairy tale
Not everyone will take from you.

Truth has not died in the world,
And you will not kill it,
You monster of the adversary,
And in hell you will burn.

793-8

@@

They joked,
Avoided
Serious showdowns,
Quarreled,
Avoided insults,
Hours flew,
Deflated like powder,
Pressing the relationship in dreams.

And before dreams or at dawn
Thoughts gathered into focus,
And a dear person, not some mistress,
The palm of the hand wanted to feel.

To tell the heart
And pass it on to her:
“Whether tomorrow comes, or yesterday passes,
I don’t give a damn!”
“I Love you.”

792-9

@@

Taras willed it and I have the right
To tend to the body while I am alive.
It became the carrier of God’s plan,
Molded from dust it received the soul,
Into a peculiar earthly vessel for her.

The crematorium fire will simplify the rites,
Without ceremonies it will gather into ash
What they once called Michael,
So they may bury him with his beloved in an urn
When the parting from the dear ones comes.

In the embrace of the one the Lord has given,
A generator of good and meaningful inspirations,
Planet-Mama will receive us forever
In one place and on the same day,
And the Father will meet us in the starry temples
Under the choirs of heavenly songs.

791-9

@@

More than I can give,
Don’t hesitate, take it, I allow,
I don’t know
How else to prove
That I truly love you.

A sin, when there are bans,
A breach in the vow of fidelity, —
I open
The borders for a time,
You may take the most secret.

Fill yourself with happiness to the brim,
Break free without end,
Don’t be afraid.
Come back again
And share —
I am waiting.

790-9

@@

Internal organs swallow the outer,
So that it may seize from within as well,
Today becomes yesterday
Under the sights of the next day.

The funnel sucks sand and water,
Pours out at the exit and spills,
Takes from above, gives from below —
Time plays and observes.

It came from home, returned home —
Separate bees and the universe’s hive
Work like a bagel
And the hole in it.

789-9

@@

“What are you hiding? Come on, show me.
Whose messages, from whom the letters?
The photographs will tell
Who that goat is.
Let it be at a party, if not at the beach —
I’ll figure it out. I’m no ass.”

Only girlfriends, there are no rivals —
As if everything is clean.
And suddenly a reproachful thought passed through:
“And how is it with me personally?

Women and girls, old and young,
In relations I am free and sharp,
But I’m no traitor, I love her,
So why the suspicions toward her?”

788-8

@@

Scientists will meet in Berlin,
Olympians will gather in Tokyo,
Unknown yet who, and not today,—
They have not even held a colloquium,
Only voiced the idea,
And people already believed in it.

To flock together beyond the earth, —
Imagination is lacking, they take it for a lie,
The prophets have not testified enough.

The impossible becomes reality,
Taken as a given,
So we shall one day meet boundlessness too,
Having embraced the unattainable infinite.

787-8

@@

Jokes are a serious matter:
They will cheer, but they will also kill,
One must and one may joke:
Wisely, not just any how.

So the feeble may get on their feet,
And the boor may sow good:
Having broken horns with jokes,
Jokingly drive evil from others too.

And so that no one would cry,
Let snide irony
And cruel sarcasm
Depart, as a false weapon,
As a disgusting absurdity.

786-8

@@

I often hear: “The world is cruel,”
More rarely — “A joyful life,” —
So sums up the deep
So-called “I” in each of us.

The little shell surveys
What was gifted by the waves,
Studies where the good is, where the evil,
Making an effort.

And does not suspect that what it sees
Outside is a mirror of being —
With hostility it will scare itself,
With friendliness be amazed: “What Beauty!”

785-8

@@

From a Chinese woman and a German
Born in France,
Who ended up in America,
What will he call himself?
To which nation will he belong?
How will he keep himself?

As an Indonesian
Or a tumba-yumba,
A Nigerian,
Or maybe Judas.

Yours
Or ours,
The humiliated most-just?
I have no doubt he’ll choose the best —
The most promising.

784-8

@@

You are constant care
For children and grandchildren, for everything in the world,
Endless ideas, shopping, work,
For you, what for others is living for yourself.

You are my inspiration, a piston to action,
Meaning in everything around,
Gratitude for the shared years of youth,
For the replacing of old with new.

I grumble, I resist, I treasure my peace,
I hide where there is stillness.
Will force the lazy one to march in line
Her feminine majesty.

783-9

@@

To one — everything, to others — nothing,
At first glance — unfair,
There should be less evil appearing,
But a miracle is taken for a ray in the dark.

Among the dung a fragrant rose delights,
A rainbow — after the storm and rain,
A great team prepares the champion,
No beet — you cannot cook borshch.

It turns out nature teaches patience,
Smile, why are you sad?
For roots to send up shoots from the earth,
And you, Cinderella, will astonish in your time.

782-9

@@

Humaneness loves, does not offend,
Breathes happiness, carries blessing,
Sets itself aside
And helps
Lift up the weakened other.

In conflicts, as a sanguine, it saves the truth,
Wins,
The one who took
And the one who gave,
All make peace, no one wages war,
In the courts it never comes to filing cases.

But when with pitchforks brother rises against brother,
Possessed in an evil frenzy,
It is time to call the heavenly ambulance,
And return God’s morality to both,
To heal
The sapiens in the homo.

781-8

@@

Jealousy in dreams, trust when awake —
Here it is, true love,
With a light egoism, simultaneously sincere,
Whoever it hunts, for that one is the catch.

Eternal theme for poems and novels,
Memory of the old and dreams of children,
Full of surprises and altered plans,
Improvisations of mad ideas.

It bustles, knows no rest,
Aspires to the ideals of being,
On the laurels of bliss love rests,
Ready, like a lion, for a new leap.

780-8

@@

Behind the back of grandiose success
A fatal collapse is hiding,
What was hastily proclaimed wisdom
Suddenly splits at the seams.

The Lord opposes the proud,
Gives grace to the humble,
The arrogant will stumble and grimace,
Today’s nobility will be put to shame.

So then, must we not strive,
Is the effort vain and empty?
                   …
The spiritual heads toward heaven,
They carry the earthly to the graveyard.

779-8

@@

A samurai’s sword in the corner by the bed,
Not someone’s gift, not a souvenir —
The dreamed-of weapon of an army’s chief,
It has enchanted the master since ancient times.

The worn plow returned to the furnace,
It flapped in sheets
And bent in layers
Many times.
Tempering in ice strengthened the metal
So much that it even splits silence in two.

With knocks in the forge he annoyed the neighbors,
He ate poorly and slept little,
The blacksmith worked.
Why he lived — he found out to the end.
He lifted it in his hands,
Knelt on one knee
And not a katana*, but with a bow and with dignity
To you, country,
He gave himself.
__
•Katana — a kind of samurai sword.

778-7

@@

About the intellect of whales and dolphins
Rumors have spread for a long time,
The even-toed ungulates in some generation
Understood: on land there is evil.

They returned to the water element,
Outwitted the worldwide flood,
They don’t much miss the land —
The orca and the sperm whale.

In the oceans people trouble them less,
Though there are plenty of dangers there too,
The leviathans have survived and exist,
Australopithecus did not destroy them to the end.

777-2

@@

As thread follows the needle, thought follows the idea
Inspires or saddens,
Puts the will into the stance “attention”
Or forces it to flee.

It drinks from the source considered faith,
Grows into words and deeds,
Charitable or extremely lustful
It lays a path to glory.

The operator-thought is a gain of society.
A droplet for a city,
A country, the earth,
Among the stars a tiny spark —
The universe values it highly.

776-9

@@

Among grasses and trees, nature’s children
Cling to mother-earth,
Asphalt and concrete stairs of evolution
Say: “Now you are strangers to her.”

From the lounge into a plane, by escalator into the mountains,
The screen shines with beauties,
Phone and computer speak with us,
No wives, no children, no mothers.

The artificial is wiser than you.
If intellect is from heaven,
And the bodily dreams of comfort,
Then must we surrender to the machine?
Let the creation possess the creator?

775-9

@@

Word-formation, mosaic, sacred sounds,
World-structure, a strict law —
The speaker takes the cosmos in his hands,
Tears it and forms his own canon.

The likeness of the Creator, like a spermatozoon,
Strives toward Truth from bottomless depths,
Wins immortality in a duel with zero,
Bounds up to unreachable heights.

The ovum waits powerfully,
Watches the vault of ladders and towers,
The Creator helps the thought of man,
Word with Word, for He too is the Word.

774-9

@@

Oh, these provocateur types!
Cardsharps, sly ones,
Cheats-manipulators,
Front-runners.

They race swiftly after cups,
They receive a prize,
They take a bite of the gold medal.
They’ll cook up the borscht —
So it doesn’t sour,
They’ll eat it themselves
And leave the hungry the rest.

Pioneer trailblazers —
Not always egoists,
They don’t take only for themselves,
And among them there are fine fellows —
They’ll lay the path,
And even help us squeeze through.

773-8

@@

The doctor treats, divides the mixture,
What to take,
How often
And when,
So that in good time
Not to fall
Under the surgeon’s scalpel,
To avoid disaster pharmaceutically.

Health invariably
Concerns him —
He brings
Into accord
Yin and Yang,
He studies constantly,
Experiments,
While the sick depart
To other knowledge.

In the needs of harmony
Without pills and agony
Let even in mortals resurrect
The dark and the light,
Cold, warmth,
The feminine and the masculine,
The earthly and the heavenly,
So they abandon sin, the rotten and the dishonest,
So that medics would have less work.

772-8

@@

Anxieties, anxieties! By day you flee far —
One manages to drive you off,
You’ve found a target for revenge —
At night you won’t let me sleep.

A conversation with someone, a film watched,
The ricochet of a barely noticeable thought
Form a squad of nightmares,
Shatter reality into splinters.

The body sleeps,
The subconscious takes the watch,
Keeps vigil, reminds, teaches
The failure not to relax tomorrow.

771-8

@@

One beats, seven hold,
And suddenly the victim rises in spirit,
The attackers flee —
The humiliated will take comfort and learn
That there is truth in the world.

They will support the weak
For will and for might,
Everyone loves victory
And a change of places.

Yesterday’s hooligans
Are humane like no one.
They are us, you and I.
Good is cloaked evil.

770-8

@@

Give me, please,
A piece of your life —
Energy and time.
I’ll share them too.

Aid and groceries,
A service and goods,
A horse for rent, a bay —
From me — a fee.

If not barter, then cash,
A promissory note — for a freight car.
The best dollar or kopeck
To trade lives is the standard.

769-8

@@

The male seizes, the female yields,
Both become owners —
The continuation of the line happens,
They gift life to you and me as well.

Defeat becomes victory,
They caught the submissive one — and he caught too,
For he steps reliably on the road
That the frontier trod.

He draws blessings from the glory-hungry,
Glory, but not shame,
So that children and grandchildren later would say:
“Grandfathers lived through good times.”

768-8

@@

The grandson fell ill, the children rushed about,
They ask to pray to the Lord of Hosts,
The prescribed medicines don’t help,
That’s why they trouble the family rear.

When alarm — run to God,
I too have need of Him.
If not to Him, then to whom?
For from somewhere the source of Life pulses.

To the indifferent, health “comes by itself,”
So they believe — there is no Creator,
Faith in the better never hurts,
Especially in Care — without bounds, without end.

767-8

@@

He has many women —
My love is hopeless,
The wedding wreath is not for me,
The wedding dress is not for me.

To become the only one — there is no hope,
“Come to your senses,
Don’t get burned!” —
A treacherous tear reminds me again.
Though spring riots all around,
Unopened leaves are falling.

I surrender,
I renounce all claims.
You are free, I hold no grudge against anyone —
I let you go
AND MYSELF.
I’ll wash off the mascara, smile out of spite.
What does “I surrender!” mean? —
I go on fighting for happiness.

766-6

@@

History is a speculator,
A persuasive palmist:
If she doesn’t steal, she’ll lie.
Propaganda’s guess
At how it was at first
Will set you up for tomorrow.

The system controls,
Citizens dream,
Sometimes so zealously
That maidans ripen.

And I have a right to a version
Resembling the truth,
To my own private spice —
What I cook, that I’ll eat.

765-9

@@

Smoke a cigarette and it will let go,
Drink alcohol and forget.
Mute your conscience, let it not torment,
Resistance is extra, let them take.

As if thought were no longer the soul’s watchman,
And no longer calls again to the struggle.
Yet it warns and sounds the alarm:
“Focus, decide, do!”

The cause was in the circumstances,
The consequence is also in your hands,
A human is called to think,
So as not to get tangled in sins.

764-8

@@

A storm. A gusting wind.
It all but begs you to levitate.
To tear yourself from the earth,
To hang, to fly —
Stealthily, so as not to tempt.

Here it is, the ecstasy of freedom,
Head and feet at eye level,
Independence from gravity…
And at once I become a shock of sensation,
A horror, a generator of super-anxiety.

People around the corner expect evil,
They flee from one another.
“Calm down, don’t wonder that I’m not like that.
I’m no ghost, I haven’t died! I am very much alive!
I long for a truer life.”

763-8

@@

Martyrs of the planet
Have absorbed darkness into themselves,
Not many bouquets are brought them,
For they are prone to onslaught,
To thuggery, boorishness, robbery,

Not only among themselves,
But among the neighbors too.
They befriend only misfortune,
And see blessing in calamities.

They carry grief as medicine,
Prosperity is their enemy.
Or maybe we should pity them?
For they pull onto themselves our gloom as well,
To free us from it —
To teach where truth is, where evil.

762-0

@@

It’s pleasant to meet a sensible person,
I’ll share with them, take from them,
I’ll laugh, rejoice, rest my soul
And, encouraged, go on.

If I bump into a boor, I won’t run,
Let them teach etiquette to me and themselves,
Instead of shaming, dishonoring mother,
I’ll quench my anger — maybe dignity will take hold.

Evil and good, stick and carrot
Lead pupils in the needed current.
Children and old, sober and drunk,
They will perfect us and take us into the Kingdom.

761-7

@@

Two kopecks are dearer than hryvnias,
A kind word than an evil purse,
Morning dew than tropical downpours,
When a glorious ending completes the work.

When widows don’t weep and the planet is sated,
Children with parents, no divorces,
A rocket flies to Mars, not into a house,
Quarrels are absent — war is forgotten.

The heart that is in the chest chooses the future,
A thought for the good, or an idea for evil.
Intentions and faith — a mighty beginning,
The mustard seed is not so worthless after all.

760-8

@@

To Avoid the Crater

War is a funnel.
It sucks in those it has seized.
The beau monde needs a scene,
The elite want to revel.

Possessions aren’t enough for them,
They’re short on “the buzz” —
If they could just seize another chunk,
Not without devastation.

The masters argue,
The serfs scuffle.
The cruel boast with untruth,
The bestialized perish for salvation.

759-8

@@

Nobody, somebody, some, each, all

Nobody of nobody to nobody by nobody
Nothing of nothing to nothing by nothing
Nowhere no-how by no kind
From nowhere to nowhere never —
There are no teachers, nor pupils, nor school.

Somebody of somebody to somebody by somebody
Something of something for something by something
Somewhere somehow by some kind
From somewhere sometime toward somewhere —
It became a phenomenon. Learn…
Some of some to some by some
Somewhat of somewhat to somewhat by somewhat
By some all around, here and there
Elsewhere some-way sometimes —
We’ll accept or we’ll deny.

Each of each to each by each
Becomes submissive or hostile…
All by all to all for all
(Both us and them)
In every way of every kind everywhere
All over always from every side
Everything of everything of all —
However sin resisted,
God’s goal is attained.
As the Covenant declared,
The world filled with blessings.

758-9

@@

Patience builds the will

One — a case, two — coincidence,
Three — a system, four — a law.
Where to stop, let conscience say,
Or to stretch out past the horizon.

Patience builds the will,
The breaking of relations — a crash,
I want to walk beside you,
Holding the path firmly.

In stumbles I will support you,
No one will smash, no one will fall —
Love is the cause for me.
Please understand me.

757-8

@@

My true sovereign

Muse… Am I addressing you rightly?
Perhaps Idea, the inspired Word?
I try to have you near,
And you nestled close to me?

How not to scare you off
Not to push away your love?
You propose to forget everything,
To satisfy
Your desires only.

Perhaps you are an idol that ruins fates,
Offering a universe for two?
Let the Creator hear the creation:
I HOLD — WITH ME
GOD!

756-9

@@

I have said everything, let time edit,
Its gap I filled as I could.
Another thinker hunts for meaning
While the threshold to the exit is still far.

He will research it himself, will not believe me,
To be convinced is everyone’s duty,
Given the chance let him change the idea for the better,
Cleanse it of the slag of hostile deceit.

We search together in the earthly purgatory,
Not competitors, but co-workers,
There, beyond the threshold, having shed the rags —
Where, we will understand, and from where we are.

755-8

@@

(To linguists on the root TER)

The TERen-thorn clings, trails behind,
A sTERva will drag you, rip the soul,
The paTIENt will stretch through, will slight you with dinner,
The gum-eRAser will wear you away by dragging.

TERritory — space, stretched out by God,
A TERrace — a stretched house past the threshold,
TERrarium, TERem — a stretched floor,
A woman attractive and good,
When she paints herself lightly,
If the lusTERko draws away or nearer.

To drag on a graTER — to grate a carrot,
TERror — the act of dragging,
A TERrorist — the one who drags.
A drawn-out TERm makes the essence hold.

754-3

@@

I am a patriot, I defend the country,
I call fellow citizens to battle,
If need be, I will die for her,
A worn sofa will not let me lie.
But today in a district
Where everyone is a stranger,
I was updating a conscript’s particulars.
When suddenly someone on the reverse
On the quota-form
Confessed to ardent love.

Now I see the questionnaire, now a blank page,
But the love note is where it was, it is there.
The clerk confessed — she is that woman,
And my reciprocity as a family man
Through betrayal will cancel my dossier,

In a romantic establishment I kiss lips
And caress intimate places,
I saved myself, but in my soul I grieve,
For conscience just now burned to the ground.

753-8

@@

He lies, threatens, beats and steals,
As if it had always been so,
He will serve honestly, protect, embrace —
And everyone has heard of that too.

A zebra lives inside,
Unreliable, changeable, piebald.
Which emotion will burst out of me,
I cannot guarantee.

I tune myself toward good for me and my neighbor,
Called to carry the light,
Forgive me if I look predatory again,
I hope later I will be sanctified at last.

752-8

@@

Someone had to pay God,
To quench His wrath,
To step onto the block of the insolent,
So the sinner might live by hope,
Might more deeply
Realize his repentance
And cleanse his garments
On the road home.

The Lamb chose marriage with the blameless one,
Who will value the sacrifice and hear the call,
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
Works in the New Testament as well,

Whoever mocked and did not stop in evil,
That one will lose salvation
From not understanding
That with Love as his face
The descendant of David set himself as a shield
Not among creation,
But before the Creator.

751-4

@@

The cardsharp was given the whole world to play,
Conscience long forgotten,
A reckoning for crimes hangs over him,
The poison of lies comes to the rescue.

Aces, kings and queens up the sleeves,
A knife behind the sock, prompters all around,
No getting by without self-advertisement,
Rigged witnesses and papers.

And what if he really will make us rich,
Just as he promises?
And restore our greatness again,
If he does not lose to Satan.

750-7

@@

A shack in the village, not a house.
A poorer place, it seems, there is none.
Pretty girls all around,
But it was here that She was born.

Here she lived, accepting her lot,
Friendly among people, she honored her parents.
Beloved, when I especially longed for you,
I would secretly pass by your windows.

They called me a lost soul.
Regardless of the villagers,
I saw the humbled as the finest,
With the scent of lilac and the beauty of roses.

749-8

@@

Flow, little streams,
Into all the worlds —
And though a canal is being dug,
The little clouds will water you,
The orchards will drink you,
So God ordained, the finale is His.

Float, loaves,
The needy wait for you,
Let them laugh at sincere fools —
However you turn it,
The romantics are blessed:
To convert the swindlers
They are not merely polite —
They bless in answer to wrath.

They do not strive to own, but to serve,
They give out left and right,
They are easy to deceive,
But truth will not forget to repay —
The currents carry bread in reply.

748-8

@@

The invader will drive out, kill, deport,
Bring his own brood onto what he seized,
Will feel himself the victor,
Having explained that he is not stealing.

Not many years will pass,
Descendants will call it primordial,
With the brand of greedy orcs
They will stamp them and curse them.

In time they will stand in defense
Against that same horde of their own,
Would one’s own not attack —
Let them know where they came from.

747-7

@@

Secrets of being, encoded in the Word,
Go on living in thoughts and in sounds,
Flying off, they return again,
To compose themselves in knowledge and sciences.

They scatter in quarrels and bind together,
Lead to wars and rebuildings,
Divide into clans and groups,
Without tearing away from the foundations.

Let us argue, so as to part
To the ends of the earth and beyond the oceans,
So that later, coming together, more tightly weave
Sensations and experience in words,
So the code may fix itself more firmly.

746-7

@@

When even small obstacles
There is no strength in oneself to overcome,
The cliffs frighten, the steepness,
Beyond the rubicon — rubicons.

Kilogram by kilogram they wear mountains down,
The law is written in words,
Little seeds will fill the granaries,
And you yourself will heap up a rubicon.

Fears will suddenly become laughable.
“I am a giant!” — the slave will proclaim,
Already a lion, not a kitten,
He will walk the field of dandelions.

745-8

@@

— How much is two plus three?
— It depends on the country.
Four where you steal whether you want to or not,
Six — in the one that does not give up its own,
Five — in a dictatorship of discipline.

And while algebra counts
In conditions of peace or war,
Whoever took power, he rules,
Though it devours and rages,
The horde with the zeal of locusts,
Offers a zero in the sum,
For it hates fullness.

Two and two —
Four.
By the look of it — simple arithmetic.
Two boards, a nail, — no hammer left…
Nobody swiped it —
Such is the mathematics of truth.

744-8

@@

The rake still teaches,
Forming the thinker.
The pupil’s steps — five,
One step — the teacher’s.

To recognize a reliable one,
A rung for growth —
Here is where wisdom would help,
And choosing is not simple.

Insolent self-assurance,
Messenger of egoism,
Having clenched rage into a fist,
Giving itself over to whatever-ism,
Carelessly steps into the abyss —
And will eat itself.

743-9

@@

A knight at night
On a unicorn
Over silken grass,
Not on the road,

In a fairy-tale garden
Scatters radiance,
Drives trouble away —
At first in imagination.

He will wake as an ordinary man,
But he will write the dream down.
And suddenly he will shine!
He will go and will not stop —
Cleanse, bleach white,
And not only the black,
He will believe in himself,
And after himself others too
He will call toward the dream.

742-9

@@

The unknown frightens.
The future lies in wait
Behind a screen.
Faith does not know,
But it promises,
Looks
Sincere.

There is something to recall of what was lost,
Reliable accounts in the banks,
And tomorrow, still unseen,
Waits beyond the nights in the daybreaks.

Shall we ignore the landmarks,
The callings, the purposes of living?
There is no getting by here without faith —
It is good to love faith,
Faith needs to be grown.

741-9

@@

Photographs will not say much,
I leave myself in the verses.
Among better thoughts and worse
Let mine too lie down in the canvas.

They will cheer one on to do good,
Or push one toward a crime —
I propose to live,
And the consequences — later.

They will agree with me
Or they will condemn —
That is how it goes,
Worth remembering:
Recommendations are many,
And the choice is in people.

740-8

@@

Again relationships — a bottomless theme.
Grievances and insults in a sauce of justice,
Defending oneself, a zealous need
Not to miss a chance to boast.

Boast of what?
To put the neighbor down?
Or to sort through the labyrinths of causes
Of the wondrous things lived through?

Yes, I look for advantage,
Exits for myself and for those I speak with.
From disappointments and emptiness
Memory suggests the ways of flight.

739-7

@@

Turn the cheek, let God strike —
He will not knock out a tooth, but will strengthen,
Will rid bones and body of sluggishness,
Will teach how to become gold and flint.

Only let the fleshly heart in His palm
Humbly receive grace,
Love and joy inexpressible,
For hatred and sorrow will fly away.

The past will lie upon the tablets
As a witness of the Father’s miracles,
We shall see what comes next,
And for now: Christ is Risen!

738-9

@@

Gog and Magog conduct a filtration,
Remaining of them
Are the most worthy:
The unreliable replenish emigration,
Fall under liquidation,
Considered as their own
Are the most cruel.

They will be able to “repeat,”
They will find adherents throughout the world,
They will gather ones like themselves
Scoundrels of various grades.

A few more steps to Armageddon —
As a world team of orcs
A herd of beast!s and animals
Satan in a single stream
Prepares in a mass
Upon Jerusalem.

737-9

@@

There was a church here, now a store.
Why pray? Trade is blooming.
The charms of shop windows call
With no reminders of God anywhere.

Except perhaps among the earrings
A little cross with inlaid gold
Of the overgrown PATHS to faith
Has remained a distant memory.

Money, wealth and grandeur
Sweep everything from the path —
They deprive villages of temples,
For conscience has sold itself to sin.

736-8

@@

Natural selection is merciless to the feeble,
A mistake is threatened with leaving the TRACK,
Success waits for the zealous,
The ardent one builds a nest for the family.

A leader comes to power with an idea,
With the Quran, with the New Testament of Christ,
He assures of equality, of brotherhood,
But to assert himself is his goal.

Under the mask of one inclined toward truth
With a strong fist
He demonstrates around him the right of the strong,
Saying, the crucified one was a weakling.

735-9

@@

Dreams trouble, friends turn away,
And later depression torments.
In an enchanted circle find themselves
Rage and destructive aggression.

Everyone around is guilty,
The ego justifies itself.
And suddenly here — the Word,
Unobtrusively again and again,
From within it educates the conscience:

“Change yourself, not slyly, but sincerely,
Realize the needs of the enemy,
Your repentance is the keys to peace,
Buy relations and CALM inexpensively.”

734-8

@@

Just as they first call us heroes,
So later they will throw the blame on us,
For all that we and you will have done,
Whether we make peace, or go to war.

Today’s beautiful will be condemned tomorrow,
What the sun has lit, darkness will cover,
The sensation will later be forgotten,
We look around — we are already gone.

Can vanity really be the main idea,
Chaos and a coincidence of circumstances?
The spiral of dialectics and the speck of WHERE I am
Cannot hide the Creator’s glory.

733-9

@@

Oh, a house is burning beyond the river,
A drunken neighbor set it on fire.
It falls to me to save it from the fire —
They say that I influence the world.

It is in my power to put out the flame,
To twist the malefactor’s arms,
All the resources for that are there,
But I would rather enrich my own.

Let God help the weaklings,
And I am on the side of the strong,
Where violence wins:
The bandit and the robber are my ally.

732-5

@@

(A reaction to 709-8)

There is no life in her gaze.
It passed, like a wave.
In the soul emptiness and sufferings sped up.
Now loneliness too. For what?

For this: that she wanted, out of poverty,
When a moment was running by,
To give herself captive to unworthiness,
So she could then light a hookah,

To dress up playfully in trinkets,
For it is sweet to live in the mirror.
But fate burns like nettle,
And in the throat it chokes, it hurts.

The GIRL has thought today,
Does she even need this gold?
She could have lived in the mountains of Frankivshchyna —
Barefoot, yet married.

Hryshchuk Yu.L.
21.12.2025
(And a little of my co-authorship)

731-7

@@

Wonderful!
But praise not me,
But the one who the Word
And the Word gives.
Spreads Him, sows Him,
With the Word cares for the Word.

The calling is given selectively —
At the treasury of spiritual riches
I too have been counted as Ali Baba,
But let us acknowledge the owner without sacrilege.

Did you like the verse, does it inspire you?
Has respect for the author been born?
Though the writer seeks it,
The inspiration is not from his source.

730-8

@@

Does Christ need a false beauty,
The kind that conceals sin?
A heavenly soul is perfectly lovely —
Who could perfect it further?

Stone, metal, a wig or paint?
Elegant shoes or a Gucci cut?
A prostitute, kept by a sugar daddy, is pretty,
But the consequences of binding yourself to her are painful.

Bodily charms blind the victim
With one corrupted from within.
Decorations often mask a dead one,
Poisonous to a person’s salvation.

729-8

@@

The ape learned to leap through the trees,
The human —
To lie, to kill and to steal,
The machine —
To control the planet:
Whom to lift up,
And whom to let fall low.

Progress steps forward,
Evolution is relentless,
Bayraktar and Shahed flew apart,
As consequence and cause.

If you wish, deepen the study of Truth,
If you wish, rejoice, or fall into depression,
But accept for the world this definition:
They are carrying us to an address.

728-8

@@

China waits. They say, it is wise.
Why should the Yanks hurry too,
In the Europeans’ opinion,
To stick their nose into Europe?

All the more so, of their own
Problems they have a full sack,
And other people’s fires
Are easier to put out
When beyond the borders
You do not have to go far.

Look, Europe is next to Ukraine,
So it is for her to help Ukraine,
And for America from across the sea
To supply Europe.

727-8

@@

The nature of peace —
The silence of the jungle,
From GAINED fat
The burning of weekdays.

The nature of peace —
A sated prairie.
The ax laid aside,
A satisfied empire.

The nature of peace —
Forgotten claims,
Sincere friendship
From kin to pension.

726-7

@@

In tandem the cars and the locomotive
Compete over who is more important.
Who more sincerely
Served people for their good,
Who is truly better, who is worse.

The engine turned the wheels,
Brought the consumer
What was needed almost to the house,
But not all the glory is the tractor’s —
It HAD to haul the body too
(Of whose importance I stay silent).

Let the head stay in its place,
Though it seems to dominate,
And its words are haughty,
But it is worth nothing
If there is no body with it.

725-7

@@

When on the road the steering wheel jams
And a sharp afterburner is called for,
An ordinary brake comes to the rescue,
To preserve the crew.

It is not speed that causes the accident,
But a sudden stop.
What shatters the relations between a couple
Is not a powerful blow, but the fragile
Perception
Behavior:

Indignation, jealousy, offense,
The painful desire to take revenge,
They could not at the start, at once
Pause the emotions —
The result is weeping,
Not a yielding ball,
But a stubborn smashed vase,
You cannot glue it back together.

724-8

@@

So that eggs would be laid and broth would boil,
The housewife raises speckled-hens.
Fortunes grow and the throne grows stronger
From the number of slave-people.

“Give them less, take from them more
Under the guise of democracy,
But do not go beyond the banks,
Pacify the party’s opponents!” —

A hint to tyrants, and they are among us,
And each one dreams of a crown.
Not for nothing is paradise-time the bait
After the soul flies off beyond the clouds.

723-8

@@

I believe — the truth is with me,
The opponent thinks it is with him,
In disputes one cannot avoid pain,
The threat of one’s own becoming a stranger.

I regret the quarrel,
And so I propose:
“Socrates
Is my brother,
And the truth is beyond the door.
Come, without fatal losses
Let us go to it at once.”

He resists, asking is in vain.
Then perhaps in patience the hostility will vanish,
When the truth itself in time
Will RECONCILE us — will come out to meet us.

722-7

@@

I took it apart, swept it, sorted it,
Not a garage and not a house, but my own soul —
What I could, I made sense of and described,
But I must go on living.

I seemed to draw a sum, reached the end,
And beyond the finish — NEW starts,
Laurels CRUMBLE from the wreath,
After school — to the desks again.

Let the wind scatter them, and the rains wash them away —
Dry matches and hydrants on the lawns.
We uncover reserves we never even knew of, —
To talents, talents are added.

721-6

@@

The nail said: “I did this,”
Though the merit is the finger’s.
Someone praised the hand,
And into the sleeve hid

The true hero — the forearm,
Far from it, — the shoulder,
If we take it higher.
Is it not the arm! Or maybe someone else?
The torso, the organism, the person,
The individual, the family, the country…

The one
First cause
Of defeats, or of victories,
In the whole and in the trifles — God!

720-9

@@

To justify a truth, white or black,
They launch counterpropaganda,
As a result of a treacherous storm
They receive a destructive karma.

Tense situations
Start wars.
Subversive provocations
Turn demonstrations
Into bloody slaughters.

Will or fate?
The enemy or you?
Sparking against each other
The worlds of contradictions.

719-9

@@

Had a goal?
Reached it?
If so – hang emptiness
Like a banner.

Like a flag of victory,
Crowned with glory
At a dead end of the road.
The mission is finished.

A mission is not an achievement,
But only an approach,
Eternity’s striving —
Others must.

718-8

@@

A hunter of dreams
From another reality
Pulls ideas.
With nonstandard thoughts
In their instructiveness
He composes trophies.

You are not you.
And the prey is granted to you.
They shone on you — shine on others.
Let it see the worlds
And the rays from on high
The enchanted soul.

Yours and nearby.
This film is not for everyone.
Its viewing —
A filling of the empty.

717-9

@@

God is just,
Though they do not acknowledge Him,
But a happy ending,
When they take less,
And give more.

They let it go to “waste”
And wait for autumn,
So the just would tally
In time and in space.

Trouble, when they wait
For the earthly and no more.
“There’s no meaning!” — they cry before death.
To depart without faith is far worse,
Without it the choice is only to die,
And with faith they go to resurrect.

716-9

@@

Someday others too, without mountain passes, at once
Will go through the tunnel happy,
Saving shoes and time,
For the long miles will shorten.

And the highlanders will rejoice
On the age-old slope,
That their countrymen,
Not exhausted and dear,

Do not stumble and do not fall.
Though in plenty and in strength,
They do not even remember
The miners in the mile.

715-5

@@

Fertilization and death
Arouse in different ways.
In the through-and-through stitching
Birth and vanishing away.

It appeared —
To seize.
It yielded,
To set free.

The greater is formed by the lesser,
The cell becomes a body.
The last — again the first…
…After the fuller whole
The soul flew.

714-8

@@

Again the alarm vibrates:
“Enough sleeping, get up, rise
To the usual routine tasks —
With enthusiasm or complain.

Decide yourself, joy or sadness
Will lead you by the hand through the day.”
I choose the better profit —
A thought inspired by the positive:

“I’ll LOVE what I do, then I’ll do what is loved.”
From such a slogan and substance
Everyone will be well,
Not only me, the egoist.

713-7

@@

I’ve been a guest enough. Time to remember honor.
A bow to the hosts —
They shared bread and home,
The goodness of their hearts.

One must not abuse,
Time to set out on the road,
So as not to disappoint.
May they see me off in peace.

One needs to know the bounds —
One’s own first, of course.
For someone more worthy in line
They are remaking my bed,

(A farewell sketch)

712-7

@@

There lived Adam,
The Garden was enough,
But he felt himself alone,
The self became too little.

Now he has a wife,
She needs a lot —
He cares for his other half,
More than for himself.

From where is comfort to be added
In comfort?
Easy to guess —
From Adam at work.

711-4

@@

In a cold climate poetry withered,
Processes slowed, anabiosis.
Onto reality — a lazy projection,
Snow and frost wrap it in fur coats.

Fortunately the planet is tended by the sun,
Summer changes even winter.
The formed globe plays with its axes,
For no one will cancel the first cause

To freeze and to warm,
To deaden and resurrect again,
To develop nature, to form the human,
Offering in experience rhythm and rhyme,
To paint the picture of the world’s making.

710-8

@@

War broke the families,
Crippled the fates,
You cannot drive the predator out of a human,
He constantly craves blood.

Having borne insane losses,
He dreams of righteous revenge.
The offender must be repaid —
So holiness forgets about chastity.

Not having agreed with the enemy whose is whose,
Again he goes to sort it out:
Defends,
Or takes back what is his.

709-7

@@

That’s what habit means…
The war in the news has grown tiresome,
Its landscapes from the window,
In the morning a roll call of the living.

Draws attention to itself
Sudden silence without screams, without words,
The song
Of crickets,
The chirping of birds.
And, having felt a zest for living,

Despite the night strike,
You write to a friend: “Hi.
Nothing special,
Our team is in place,
Of all that’s truly strange —
Maybe that the rose has bloomed.”

708-8

@@

rfia is “mighty” here too —
It changes Ukrainian spelling.
In pu’s surname — a part is missing,
Like rust or chaff, sediment or oxide.

Huge letters become small,
Like puffed-up imperialness,
After the bites of the moscow-viper
The poison must be neutralized.

So linguistic immunity is at work,
To save the host is its mission.
The stronger the thought IN Ukraine,
The faster raissia will break its teeth.

707-8

@@

The classic of poetry — ABAB:
The first with the third, the second with the last
Line rhymes.
When not — the poet is considered bad.

Here though rhythm and measure —
A demand not among the lesser,
Plots — among the lightest.
Free style and genre —
A literary terrorist act!

So it would be convenient to learn by heart,
And the truth would not sting too much.
Let them correct me once more:
And how are BAABAB or BBABBA worse?

706-8

@@

Anger boils over, I’d tear the eyes out,
To scold is too little, I’d curse,
But it stubbornly will not apologize —
I’d tear it to pieces.

Eh, I’ll ignore it.
Why ruin the nerves?
I pretend I neither notice nor hear,
Let them heal the breaks in the relationship.

Then I decide to meet in peace,
The potential enemy is embarrassed. We manage to listen and come to understanding —
Friendship grows even stronger.

705-8

@@

I saw the sunset
Beside a brother in his jacket,
He tenderly stroked my hair,
And I drove my girlfriend away.

I did not want to share attention with her,
At sixteen to lose a dear person.
Tell me what I am to do now —
I think I have met the ideal man.

Do not think it is my own brother,
But the brother of that same girlfriend.
I dream madly of spending days with him,
I hope the girlfriend will forgive and forget,
And there will be no tension between us.

704-6

@@

Walls of distrust fall sharply,
The bubble of inaccessibility bursts,
When they look sincerely into the soul,
Burn through the ego with Love’s Spark.

In a hostile world
Full of dangers
They do not open to everyone.
If they do not avoid the cold,
Then the heat,
They see a threat
In the poor and in the wealthy.

From swamp to gold with a sharp change,
By transforming hypocritical pride into soulfulness
Sharply throwing off the masks of the dull,
They unexpectedly reach
The neighbor’s Holy of Holies.

(To the blogger Dmytro Kravchenko-2)

703-8

@@

It wounded the soldier
Alone in the trench.
Curious, how too many
Are the saved in his work?

What sort of shrapnel
Pierced him through?
The obituary can wait,
Let him still live.

To save more lives,
He has to ignore his own.
The warrior is ready for self-giving
For the freedom
Of the people,
For a better fate.

702-7

@@

Without truth they walk in darkness,
They break and they beat,
Only by it all the earthbound
Will rise above the WORLD.

And you, of the worthless philosophers,
Neither Odysseus nor Heracles,
Shine in the dark tunnels,
The heroes are others, you are the oracle.

Their weapons — hands and feet,
Saber and horseshoe.
You have MORE power —
Receive the force of the WORD.

701-8

@@

In the center of a period I will find fullness,
In fullness — a period.
With boundlessness I will name
A simple iota,
The uncontainable I will gather in an armful.

Now drunk from a droplet of wine
That is called life,
My soul cannot imagine
That it will drink and never be sated

From the ocean of Love.
By the Word and in the Word,
Losing and giving birth,
I accept myself —
Coming to the period,
I begin again.

700-9

@@

To dissolve in God—to give oneself
In the aromas of the lived and the intended.
To regard one’s present as His,
The elusive speck —
an overflowing of the eternal.

I came and I will go —
They did not know
And will not know.
From nowhere into fullness —
So that there they would receive,
Here they will drive out.

Appearance into the world —
Boundlessness of plenty.
Into endless flight
We will transform the period.

699-8

@@

First the microbe
Attacked the bacterium,
It came to attempts
To set forehead to forehead
Nuclear artillery.

The cause of Armageddon
Seems to be artillery.
But guilty of it all
Are the microbe and the bacterium.

A thought accepted
By a plan of action.
Developed into a global conflict —
Rejoice if you want,
Pity if you want.

698-7

@@

Though the skeleton is already without skin,
Without innards and without flesh,
They hold in faith
To sky-high goals:
The skeleton is our foundation.

He is the soul’s carrier,
A reliable frame,
Having brought to the fulfillment of dreams,
Willing to lead to the next.

To thank the skeleton
With muscles or without
The poet is itching,
Before the impulse vanishes.

697-9

@@

My word is — Glory!
Hallelujah to the Creator!
The work is finished —
I go to Him.

To the Lord God,
The Creator Almighty.
To the Holy Living One,
Judge and Savior…

The worthlessness will pass
Of mutilated fates,
Eternal bliss
The Password will unlock.

696-9

@@

A multitude of angels.
Battle on the Donetsk front.
The first.

The aggressor with a sword
Grows.
Disgust.

Armies grimace and fear.
Let each one understand —
A stone is flying.

695-8

@@

Don’t worry, they will remember you —
Your fruits are in view.
They will respect your merits…
But greed calls down disaster.

Come to your senses in senile decay,
What you built — do not destroy.
In the untimely,
For it is dangerous,
Feel the threat to the world.

A young Solomon
Is hiding somewhere among us.
Though the obsolete resists,
The sage — to the throne!

(An address to aged leaders)

694-8

@@

I’m sly, I do not go to war —
Old, I have an excuse.
I call the young to the front.
Under someone’s whooping and snickering.

Angry at the TCC
With its bribe-taking mug.
And Putin, that louse,
Is kept for later by karma.

If not Ukraine,
Then Europe will stop him,
Without the runaways and with them.
When God intervenes,
The spring of truth will unwind —
We’ll see who the sucker is.

693-8

@@

There are not enough volunteers to defend.
Drive them to the front by force?
Obviously yes,
When there is no one left to fight.

From the conscious — blocking detachments,
Onto minefields — the unreliable.
Such cruel laws.
That is what wars are for.

Sorry to lose people?
Then they improve the weapon —
At the cost of enemy deaths
They will save you and me.

692-9

@@

While this positivity from quotations
Spread itself under weary feet —
The Comforter encouraged, spoke in thoughts,
The longed-for thresholds drew near.

They say it was my will and strong spirit
That led me to glory —
It was that inner hearing opened to the deaf,
Dishes lured the hungry and the thirsty.

Though I stand on stage at full height
And with raised arms,
Do not call me for an encore,
But the stalker of souls among you.

691-8

@@

Slaves flee to a better master,
To protect themselves from the evil one.
The chase of war pursues them,
Sparing neither its own nor strangers —
No one.

Flee west, flee east —
To the Zaporizhian rapids.
Set Cossack sentries, plug
The breaches in the walls of freedom.

There is no freedom without blood —
Someone will have to die.
For your good and mine
There is, alas, no doing without a sacrifice.

690-8

@@

Did the martyr Job call disaster?
Not at all, yet it came.
It did not reach the soul, the foundations of faith,
Though it mutilated the city, damaged the fortress.

Temptation to Job
Broke hope.
But it met refusal —
It lost the battle.

While we fight, they will not defeat us,
When even razed to the ground,
They drive us into the stall of slaves —
They will drive us in if we renounce the Most High.

689-7

@@

Thank God again before you sleep,
For being at home at the table,
For there being food on the table,
And a place for you to sit,
And that you have a friend,
That your husband is not unfaithful,
And in his absence
Thank for the light and the warmth.

You do not see light without eyes,
Without ears you will not hear people,
Eyes in place, hearing hears,
Thank sincerely that you did not go deaf.
And thank also two legs,
That walk everywhere — here and there,
There are people who live without them,
Why then, lucky one, have you gone quiet?

I agree with you about the mess,
And that far from everything is right,
But think well among hardships,
Value what you already have here too.
And before you go to sleep,
Lay yourself in the little bed,
Constantly, friend, remember —
Do not lie down without thanks to God.

(At my sister’s request, a translation from Russian of her favorite song «Скажи спасибо Богу перед сном»)

688-9

@@

While they bomb Kyiv,
Be silent about politics.
«Let’s not escalate,»
Not to traumatize the psyche.

But Moscow burns —
What inhumans you are.
«I hate the khokhol!» —
It’s time to set for him
Traps and nets.

National interests —
Tension in the families.
Brothers and sisters
Forget about humanity.

687-9

@@

No medal-cross
On the chest,
And the glory won is addressed to God,
The heartstring vibrates with love,
The closer the years to the threshold.

Though nightmares still come in dreams,
For the alarm still does not sleep,
The thought of faith flies
To the stars beyond the clouds.
There peace will cheer the frightened,
There wonders take place.

According to the covenant,
The one who seeks the heavens
Prayer in dreams delivers.
When one rises above the world,
Light and joy wrap what is below,
Tears and grief become a gemstone.

686-8

@@

«I propose a war on selfishness.
Not on mine, of course, but on yours.
Toward yours I will be fierce,
And mine, come, let’s adorn it.»

Such speculation at every step:
I pull the blanket onto myself,
I notice the beams in every eye,
And I strive to exalt myself.

Of the past, the unborn and the contemporary
The mission is to go through the process.
We, as creation— the likeness of the owner.
Therefore not for nothing
His fullness
Calls us too to fullness.

685-8

@@

Our two triangle-fates
Form the Star of David —
And such overlays happen in relations.
Not hatred in them, not jealousy and not disgust,
But faithfulness, love and ache coexist.

They do not rush to the peak at once,
Stumbling along the slope.
They wait for ecstasy
In the fullness of the ripe,
To stumble suddenly upon the beloved,
And by chance meet the dear one.

Your fantasies are unknown to me,
And what frames you keep to,
But in our geometric occasion
A wonderful morning came to pass.

684-0

@@

«So that’s how it works!» —he rejoiced at the idea,
Used it, forgot,
But later returned to it,
For he felt a familiar problem.

Though with a different shade and new demands,
Depending on circumstances and on age.
With emotions more restrained
A man should grow.

And so the obstacle-rakes lie,
Unsurpassed teachers.
The old still learn to go around them,
And the young step on them again.

683-7

@@

Where one’s own, where the stranger, Orwell explains:
They carefully gather rocket fragments,
The greatest scoundrel receives a medal,
The poet sings of wars.

They bless the instruments of killing,
They count ruins as achievement,
The aggressor arouses no contempt,
They hound peacemakers with accusation.

The world changes polarity —
Fire engines burn.
Must I too, to the opposite,
Rewrite the commandments and the covenant?

682-7

@@

Time to be going,
I say goodbye to David.
We embraced, he follows after,
Not everyone can love like this —
He does not yet know love, yet lives by love.

Already in the corridor, he holds
By the hand,
On the street he will not let go,
He cannot even imagine
Parting,
I embrace him again,
And he embraces.

You won’t believe it, together with my grandson
Far off in my affairs I try my fortune,
For I consider the greatest gain
On life’s path
That in thought and in heart
He is constantly with me.

681-8

@@

«There is a time for everything,» —
Said Ecclesiastes,
I take in
Therefore
The orphan,
I drive out
The gopnik,
I follow the example in the Savior:
I love my neighbor, but also in hypostasis
I rise
Against the rebel.

Stale good
Spoils,
Heated hay
Is unfit for the stack,
There is a limit to the substitution of qualities,
Beyond which one expects mischief from friends.

One must
Watch and understand
Where to take in,
And where to let go.
In youth and in old age
Not to fall into extremes…
If we are not children.

680-7

@@

It is a sin against oneself —
To neglect one’s own.
When it is not the first week and not the first year
That the house is filled with guests,
One has to
Drive them out,

For they have grown in number and grown strong,
The locals are trash to them.
They forgot mercy and grew insolent,
They drive us natives from the nest.

From every side they shamelessly shove
Their language and their religion,
They crowd out the patron and the sponsor.
An aggressive cultural siege —
Let us save ourselves with dignity,
Let us drive them out while we still can.

679-3

@@

(Trilogy. 678th — 680th)

The situation is familiar —
A guest — not at home,
And an orphan taken into the family
Is constantly grateful and dependent…

Without shelter and even a corner
An immigrant has no full rights,
His behavior is cautious.
Fellow citizens are sated
And their children
Are sure of the good and insolent.
Trouble is not a strict teacher to them,
Their sorrows come from abundance.

Trying to become one of the family,
Useful and handy,
The newcomer carries a timid alienation
As a healing humanity —
To the arrogant, but spiritually poor.

678-9

@@

Permissiveness has still not gone out,
The pushy slogans will not fall silent:
“Do not punish your son, you are a democrat,
And do not wound him with unpleasant lectures.
Is a human not a brother to a human?
Do not overuse sharp spices in relations.

Morality is a prison,
So-called sins are true freedom,
Just so you know: there is no God,
And anarchy is our nature.”

Does vileness really bring us comfort?
Or maybe let the wise and God-fearing,
The resolute, but calm,
Let power be given to the measured?
Dictatorship is certainly evil,
But chaos too is a people’s misfortune.

677-9

@@

A rich imperishable soul,
Having given the perishable away to the last,
Kept only a chipped chest
With treasures inaccessible to decay.

With a farewell little ray the thread burned down
In the last little drop of wax.
In the middle of the night a small candle
Became a lamp on the altar
Not under the table, but high above,
A life-affirming testimony
Of enormous growth.

The mortal will say: “It’s gone, for it burned.
Such is the end of each of us.
God has nothing to do with us”:
“It truly shines,” — the living one will not lie.

(under the impression of Alla Pugacheva’s interview for Kateryna Gordeeva)

676-9

@@

It’s not too late to repark,
Closer and safer.
God protects the careful.
Time to understand how to choose,
To put it off again,
Or to load already.

Flags have been stuck in, zones marked,
Trust here, and there a drop-off,
Here you found,
And there it was lost,
Because you thought wrong and did the wrong thing.

Experience holds the cars on the rails,
And what I would always have wished for myself,
That the switchman not oversleep,
And not send
Along the wrong trajectory.

675-8

@@

Controversy is a condition for the search for truth,
Unipolarity —
A falling into extremity.
Light and vibe are granted by sparks,
Their nature — the presence of contradictions.

A short peace — the reward for wars,
Sweet sleep — the laborer’s,
The longer the parting, the stronger the embrace,
For calendars there are no stops.

And here a thought has woken in bed —
A new day demands motion,
They have woken us to feats,
Have lit the sun again,
Our nearest star.
Time to get up — the struggle awaits.

674-8

@@

A little bird, a dog, or a cat,
A mouse, a beetle, or a viper
Will replenish the emptied world
That parting has robbed.

Friends and family are far,
There are no passions at all,
It is lonely somehow and not easy,
Everything around blooms, but winter is in the heart.

I must seek a temporary comfort,
I greedily catch the little beasts’ gaze…
If only I could remember
And come to love
My own soul,
Which always,
Wherever I go —
Is unfailingly near.

673-7

@@

I’ll go to those better than myself,
The holier and more noble,
As the unclean, straight into heaven
I won’t crawl on all fours — they’ll carry me in carriages.

I avoid, it turns out, the worse ones,
Having left the unfortunate
In dire situations
To fend for themselves,
I, the lost one,
Despise the lost…

They shine with a torch at night,
Carry the good news to sinners,
Save those who are in trouble,
Bring scoundrels to their senses.
Am I not a scoundrel?
From me the noble become dirty,
And I won’t touch the dirty for anything?
So maybe I can help you with something at least?

672-8

@@

Execution — a cutting-off from what was recently whole,
The dividing of it into parts and shards,
The liquidation by the predatory of the free,
Peaceful showdowns will not help.

The savanna’s sympathy — pleasure from the show,
Neither elephant nor hippopotamus
Will stand up for the victim.
Nobody is interested in putting themselves out,
Horns that screw in between the ribs —
That is true salvation for the herds.

The lion is hungry, but the bull
Also wants to live.
If not him, then who
Is to defend himself and his own?

671-9

@@

On lined paper
The old generation, for a failing grade,
Stacked up words
In a neat hand
And solemnly read them to us —
We listen politely, nearly splitting with laughter:

Very primitive — not printed,
Without artificial intelligence,
Talentlessly rhymed,
With a breach of etiquette.

The audience is embarrassed,
Some laugh.
But grandma loves as she is able,
She mangles it, but from the heart.

670-8

@@

A filled-in well gives no water,
Refusal of faith paralyzes,
Absence of morality rebels,
The unwise apostate beats himself,
Does not take and does not hear sound advice.

A limited ego without intellect
Inflicts plenty of ruin,
Posing a danger
To neighboring countries as well.

In the status of the evil and the wretched
After lunch he will come to you too,
Having freed himself of his own good,
He will free others’ good from them as well.

669-8

@@

He took away toy cars,
Broke his little sister’s dolls,
Fought and called names,
Stole cigarettes unnoticed,
When dad was asleep.
A hero.

He courted, he loved,
Fought,
Defended,
Built a family nest,
Opened businesses.
A hero!

Oh!
He hauled it in and counted.
Before he died,
He gave away what he had plundered —
Blessed the robbers.

668-2

@@

Life experience out loud
They speak and write in words.
Before the ear of grain sheds,
The scythe cuts the stem.

Poets die earlier —
They fill the granaries of heaven,
Their unfinished sonnets
Must still be kept for eternity.

I drink from the root, am drunk up by the sun,
I submit to a higher will —
They will declare the winner
The straw in the field,
And the grain in the barn.

667-7

@@

I wandered the valleys, walked the hills,
Gathered colored pebbles,
No room left for new ones —
The pockets in my pants are stuffed.

Quite the collector —
Another idea will seize him.
Too much catch — he’ll give it away or drown it,
And look like a hero again.

Oversaturated, I lose interest,
Right then imagination paints a goal,
A sacrificial spirit visits, or maybe envy —
Meanings return. I live again.

666-8

@@

To be yourself takes strength,
Which later brings good fruit —
A person cheerful and happy.
But enemies envy him:

“How is this — he lives as he wants?
Duties choke us,
To remain free — that’s a crime,
Let them make him suffer!”

They write denunciations, strip him of property,
Stick their snouts into what is dearest —
So the soul may rise higher,
So it may spread its wings wider.

665-7

@@

The bigger the fool, the greater the experience,
The more bumps on the forehead.
Let the guests boast first,
I’ll learn from them when the chance comes.

Of scars and fractures
I have plenty of my own,
I’ve made plenty of mistakes too.
The burned one knows best,
Better that he should speak.

He is a hero, for he put out a fire,
And saved children from trouble,
Climbed a high tower,
But better if he had taken away the matches.

664-8

@@

Why Christ, if there is no resurrection?
Churches, synagogues, and mosques are needless too.
Do generations really live only to die —
For the triumph of “almighty” death?

At the finish — a zero — they did not believe God,
The Creator’s plans and eternity,
Forgot they had the power to breathe,
Do not notice they are pregnant with themselves.

They have gathered to deny Life,
They give everything to ruin —
They will surely have to strike out
Even the fact that they live.

663-7

@@

I have put the Bible aside for a while,
I rarely go to church —
It does not mean at all that faith has died in me,
I place my hope in God.

I sort through what I received before,
Time to sort myself out,
Watching the news,
Watching the poles among the people.

Preachers behind pulpits
Offer a vatnik teaching.
I avoid being zombified by slander,
I long for the Holy Spirit’s leading.

662-5

@@

In the chase for money they are right here, the competitors.
A beloved craft — friends and fruits,
Not percentages of excessive profits,
Not spies and not counterparties.
Enjoy, create, and live.

Not scraps of paper, not metal, and not stone,
But precious treasures of the heart
Resistant to the lures of glory —
Her kisses are dangerous.

Greed in finances
And swollen pride —
Attributes of lordship,
But wait for trouble.

661-7

@@

The cube crumbled into dust,
The pyramid’s peak caved in,
A tooth has to be pulled,
But that — is not your trouble.

Yours is to receive and yours to grow,
Someone else must pay for this.
To have a place to come to,
A place must be freed

By the young one
Who defends the country,
And I, the old —
Burn down.
Time for the next shift —
Live. I bless you.

660-7

@@

They argued over a hundred,
Agreed on ten.
The women ached — anything but a scandal.
The rest will have to be sorted too,
The finale will decide it all.

Brothers gathered for a “scrap,”
Each dictates his own,
Defending his “dissertation,”
And learns something for himself.

Reaching the summit of truths
Is pleasing from on high to the Creator.
Grinding and smoke, flashes and sparks,
The bonfires of disputes — glory to Him.

659-7

@@

How fine we are, cool, special,
Though we pull in different directions!
Deceived, but happy.
Each one’s steps toward advantage.

The blanket is short, it does not cover everyone,
We tear it first toward ourselves,
Where here is holiness, and where is sin?
How many broken ribs?

We will answer in solitude,
Friends, cellmates:
The criminals will wait for forgiveness,
The righteous without masks will disappoint.

658-8

@@

They ask for positivity, oblivion from sufferings,
You start on the cheerful — betrayal.
On the fulfillment of hopes —
Truth does not always grow.

We balance between good and evil,
Between cunning and sincerity,
Now we hide, now we charge head-on,
Covering fear with slyness.

Blind to misfortune, occupied with ourselves.
We play golf, we write verses,
By indifference drawn into comforts
We live while others die.

657-9

@@

On tiptoe on the big toe
A pirouette begs to happen —
Hopeless at an ordinary waltz
He strains toward classical ballet.

The spinning top laughs at challenges
With perfect balance.
Under cries of “Bravo!” —
To the end and with vigor.

I cannot,
But I want it badly.
They say I dare not,
Yet I will slip through.

656-7

@@

A rainbow appeared, divided the sky,
Shoved clouds and storms into a tunnel —
They now look like an exterior,
Instead of watering cans and ceilings.

We finally have sun and light,
Fresh air, ozone.
But again in a week we wait for rain,
For the season is too hot.

People always complain,
It is too cold for them, then too warm.
That is why they are not asked
And in the changes they are not marked,
Where paradise is and where hell.

655-8

@@

Jesus of Nazareth — for the world a deceiver,
A fantasy, an invention, a myth,
A dispute among the young and the older,
Piety and humiliating laughter.

They seek the Master of the Universe everywhere,
On continents and on islands,
Everywhere it is lonely and crowded,
And so in the air, on the seas and in the seas.

Christ and Buddha,
The God of Moses and Zeus
Have helped more than one generation —
Earthlings were wrapped in the care of the heavens.
There, where it would seem a trap,
For a son it is hard without a father,
Without the Creator for a creation.

654-8

@@

Alas, borders are marked with blood,
Not forever and not for eternity.
Neighborliness with love does not work out,
Though mountains and rivers try —

Isolating one’s own and the foreign,
They make peace for a TIME,
Until hatred grows,
To shove the ridges and shift the mouths.

And the planet from a distance looks unified.
Among other cosmic bodies
With its nature, including the human —
Lem’s Solaris with its contradictions.

653-9

@@

Past, present and future
Have their components.
Events real or absent
Are transmitted in the word.

A constant process or a fragment,
A matter completed or continued,
Divided into shards or multiplied,
A millennium or a moment.

The probable, the impossible and the desired,
The imagined and the fact —
Conditionally laid out in tenses,
So as to taste the flavor of being.

652-8

@@

For slaves an elite family
Chooses from among itself a leader
To rule over the rabble.
But what if there are no poor,
Others have factories, and I have a farm?

We exchange profits,
Prosperity grows,
The country blossoms,
But we notice,
When we look around,
The slackers around us are drooling,
Their envy and rage at the rich burns,
We need protection.

For the city, the state a reliable sheriff
To stop the evil robbers,
One’s own and the strangers’.
A strong-willed overseer, not a vegetable,
Not a father-tsar, but a watchman.

651-8

@@

At night I learned a great deal,
I will try to sleep in the day as well,
All the more, today is Sunday,
I sorted the chaotic thoughts,
Hope appeared clearly,
It was not without inspirations.

Zombies work without rest,
Meanings in a fog, mountains of duties.
Sometimes one needs to make a stop,
To hear what God is saying.

For fullness
Not much is needed.
Leave the earthly to the earth,
Concentrate on the soul —
Treasures
To gather for heaven.

650-8

@@

They go to the sea for rest
To lift the tension of weekdays
Away from work and their own house
With allowances for enemies and best friends.

To stir the feeble, to calm the tired,
For children to run about, for the old to sit,
To encourage the ashamed,
To dampen the fire in the overly bright.

Waves, as mediators
Between water and dry land,
Of course, with heaven’s participation,
Will take the unnecessary,
Give the necessary,
I accept as is, I force nothing —
They will cleanse me and remember you.

649-8

@@

They say to investigate is to stop living.
For a participant to become an observer,
To step out of the test tube, to look into it…
Is that not to find oneself nearby,
It turns out, with the Creator?

To refuse to remain a game,
For a pawn, not quite a queen,
Having dodged attack and battle,
To sit at the board as a player.

What complaints? FLOORS
Each one chooses for himself:
Physically or in thought
They play him, or he plays.
And by playing,
Not abandoning the game,
Does he not a greater level
Of life achieve?

648-9

@@

They carry their crosses differently.
Cheerfully slung onto the back,
Some manage to drag them,
Someone will abandon them altogether.

The born are given rights,
So they may fulfill missions,
In the duties — a cross
And a certain dose of strength.

Having lifted it to the sky by the sides
And set it against all the winds,
There is no more need to carry the cross —
It will carry. Like a hang glider.

647-8

@@

Language divides a country.
Does Kazakh really divide Kazakhstan?
Ukrainian — Ukraine,
Azerbaijani — Azerbaijan?
Moldovan — Moldova,
Latvian — Latvia?

Russian “unites” peoples,
If they don’t want it — it will force them,
From it only “blessing, no harm at all,”
Everything foreign, it will Russify.

With genocides and provocations,
With repressions and deportations,
With Holodomors and wars
It will make us free.
It will denazify,
Appropriate and finish destroying.

646-9

@@

Five stars the brother saw,
And the sister — four.
Each one — a bureaucrat.
The argument boils,
What’s millet here, what’s buckwheat,
To reconcile them,
They brought me in.

I looked left — two,
Six I noticed on the right.
I am not flying as if in a dream,
Imagination stays in place.
Nothing is seeming, nothing doubles.
Try it yourselves —
Go and sort it out.

I watched long, peered in,
By a complex system,
Until I lined them into one,
A single star, Bright!!!
Gathered into Glory!!!
In Bethlehem.

645-5

@@

I would wave my arms
And fly —
Not with my sins
Not with the weight of sins.
The sky is for swallows
And nightingales.
As if I could
Follow the birds.

I remembered the ravens,
Kites together with vultures.
They are considered evil,
Participants in robberies.

And how am I worse?
If they can, so can I,
Big deal, a sinner.
All are like that —
With beaks, with claws.
My kin,
Wait! I am with you too!

644-7

@@

Putin — “Moses, who to the promised land
Leads his great people,”
Having stood Truth on its head,
The laws, they say, are changed by the Lord.

Kill, steal and lie,
Covet another’s goods,
Humiliate mother and aged father —
For greater holiness sin more.

Light at night, where a drone exploded.
A cloud by day, where ruins smoke —
Gog and Magog, Armageddon
Bring enormous changes.

(my wife refused to rate it, she didn’t like it)

643-0

@@

The eyes sparkled, the cheeks turned red,
He grew talkative, or suddenly fell silent,
The gaze darts, the palms sweat.
Love shapes both the wicked and the saints.

To seize, to pluck, to take one’s fill,
To leave the withered and keep mowing,
Having trampled one’s own, to aim at another’s,
To ruin oneself and him.

Or to meet one’s other half,
Taking hands, to go together,
Having recognized in oneself a person of God,
To the finish TOGETHER to race and to CARRY.

642-8

@@

Trouble flew over the roof,
But the neighbor was unlucky — It damaged his home.
Maybe to someone it seems strange —
We suffered together,
Not only he.

His grief — is hardship for me too,
Does heaven not watch over humaneness?
Might it not overturn mine as well,
Enraged by my indifference.

To gloat in another’s suffering—
Is to open the gates to one’s own,
In mutual aid, in offering a shoulder —
Our common work.

641-8

@@

With leftover ego from the egg-egg
It befits a chick
To lecture the hens —
For it also to demonstrate
The potential of life.

Let it try, gain confidence
To spin the universe,
And the experienced wise would do well to avoid
The harmful jealousy
Of stopping children,
So as to resurrect in them
As a renewed phoenix.

The mission is unfinished, admit it,
The peak of hopes has still not been reached.
Give the young one a push, do not hold back —
Pass the baton and do not begrudge it.

640-9

@@

Stages of war, like classes in school,
Must be passed to receive a diploma —
In the epicenter, in the rear, abroad
To choose between evil and good.

To allow a dictator to take hold,
To agree to become a slave,
To surrender to propaganda for the assault,
To croak as an occupier, a dog.

To save yourself and your nearest family,
To settle, to recognize the possibilities,
To protect the country from the invasion
With healthy and wise activity.

639-8

@@

I am jealous, but I don’t show it,
Maybe I fear spoiled relations,
So that with just one suspicious phrase
I don’t lose the gifts of fate.

In secret
She is getting ready for a date,
Not for nothing
She picked out her best clothes.
Does temptation really have such meaning
That one should start a fire of scandals?

I’ll get ahead of it. I’ll save the family —
I’ll share love with the rival.
I’ll bless the traitress,
Praise her for her charm:
Let her imagine him, but make love with me.

638-5

@@

A little fairy tale will help the toddler,
Acquaint him with the parents’ problems —
Kotygoroshko, Little Red Riding Hood,
Kolobok and the magic wand
Will triumph over the dark forces.

Humanity has taken a swing at the cosmos,
Not abandoning the cradle-Earth,
For Chronos still holds it back even now,
Instructing in legends and myths.

To the Incas, the Japanese, and the Greeks,
As to children, worlds opened.
To the Truth it is still far.
To it, grow and grow.

637-8

@@

Speak, my heart, though the mind rebels.
If I will not do it, then at least I will know.
Twice wretched the blind man who also cannot hear —
If I will not apply it, then at least I will have it.

Where is my holiness, of which I proclaim?
Not visible in deeds, not even worth seeking?
I stack the hints in prayers into a foundation,
So as NOT to build on sand.

The foundation must stand,
Tested by earthquake.
I will sit the exam on faith,
And finish the walls and roof with Jesus.

636-8

@@

Honey sticks, it begs to be licked,
July carries pollen in the air,

Resin sticks — water will not seep through,
Dough sticks — a tasty pie.

An unwashed body sticks to the sheet,
Fingers stick to large bills,
Eyes stick to a Carpathian autumn,
Ears stick to the playing of overtures.

The tongue sticks to the throat from thirst,
Mud sticks to pants and shoes,
Insult sticks from curses and contempt,
What is born sticks to the mystery of life.

635-5

@@

Caution! Sharp turn!
No matter how many times I drove here,
I met with unpleasant mishaps,
And I was still short of trouble besides.

So the roads met,
And a tree grew on the corner.
To admit myself the guilty one
I hope I’ll learn someday.

Should an intriguer-interlocutor appear suddenly,
Better that I brake —
Avoiding long quarrels,
Not ram the trunk, but go around.

634-2

@@

The Lord breathed, and the soul became living,
With the air, rhyme brought ozone,
Filled reality with meaning, with beauty —
It is pleasant to surrender to it as a captive.

A factory of verses is not an end in itself.
They don’t force themselves to breathe, after all.
In the cups of thoughts, the hops of poetry,
They keep like nectar, they do not shake it.

Sources of inspiration are many.
Someone may say that I speculate —
Each must choose their own,
I breathe verses, I do not fabricate them.

633-9

@@

Refuse the influence of the cosmos,
Of aliens in various realities,
Yet you cannot escape the description
Of the sky in its boundlessnesses.

Earth in the palms of the universe,
Even clenched in a fistful,
Will not miss the census —
A grain, but it will be counted.

We watch the stars through telescopes,
Not to mention the planets,
So can it be we ourselves don’t belong
To the archives where we too are objects?
Above the head and underfoot
The world and worlds.
As if we were the owners,
Yet they possess us too.

632-8

@@

A sinner went to war for the truth,
A saint calls to love evil,
The church forces one to avoid it,
But Holy Scripture has not changed.

Cunning Levites sold themselves to mammon,
They gather what is alien and shear the money,
Sheep in the folds mixed with wolves,
They read prayers
And sing psalms,
The sightless lead the blind to the pit.

Life is an exam, a thorny road.
Cassocks and vestments — only a masquerade,
Only a conscience without poisonous advice will understand:
Whoever accepted Satan, that one renounces God.

631-9

@@

Read it and forgot.
As water ran through the tap,
As the wind blew out a candle,
As a snowflake became a droplet.

What’s the sense of speaking?
Of the planet spinning on its axis?
Of flying into a black hole,
So that at last everyone becomes nothing?

From flash and fading the piston works —
A passenger hurries home,
Someone lets a thought pass, or hears a word —
And corrects the bearing onto the target.

630-8

@@

A part of humanity’s history
They did not steal, they swapped.
What was, was.
The participants — material.
They taught the descendants mankurtism,
Raised a pedestal to the leader.

Manipulations — that too is history,
Rewritten textbooks,
Grief crowned with glory,
Heroes — collaborator-renegades.

Only conscience remains,
Memory unclouded,
A tale pressed into the subconscious,
Dispatched to God’s judgments.

629-8

@@

The Lord’s Day — a day of rest,
The break between days — sleep
Periodically they make a stop,
So that at least for a minute
The Holy Spirit’s byssus might touch.

So that among cares and sorrows
A crack might suddenly break through —
“Peace to you,” — they said quietly
Consequence and first cause.

Sleep and the Sabbath —
Rest stops on a long road.
Yes, work is needed too,
To find peace in God.

628-8

@@

The world bustles, uncoils its tentacles,
Reaches toward heights and latitudes,
Does not give up, will not yield to the elements,
To win — a care of cares.

And the embryo in the embryo froze motionless,
In microscopes you can’t even make it out,
Where that Beginning is, still unknown,
Eternity’s rebuses play with us.

The boys fight, measuring strength,
For the girls, love is not enough,
Tentacle and embryo
Will surely win —
The masculine and feminine principle.

627-8

@@

Recognize the genius in yourself
In a circle of haters,
Don’t drown, you’re a float.
Big deal, a turbulent current,
For you too, without risks, there will be
A quiet nook by the shore.

Somewhere they hunt whales in the ocean,
Fly into space, rake in millions,
Build skyscrapers in Dubai,
And they allotted you no small essence.

Wait on the surface, ready to dive,
Hold onto the little bridge above,
Prepare for the tug of the catch from below,
For fate-the-fisherman’s yank.

626-8

@@

He smothered ants,
Stole in the store,
Smashed neighbors’ windows,
Lied to his parents.
Went through mistresses,
Fell in love with untruth,
Robbed what was not his,
Headed a gang.

Bought the courts,
Spawned corruption,
Seized the posts,
Raped the constitution.
The people envied him,
Took him as an example.
To such a leprosy
The whole country grew used.

They break every commandment,
Hate one another,
Threaten and intimidate,
Don’t notice the hungry.
Everything for the flesh,
There is no God for them,
And then they wonder —
Where did the war come from?

625-8

@@

Enough of politics,
Time to rest from the war,
Let’s talk food, weather, or sport.
Tired of criticism,
We’ll test the ability to love,
Forget the discomfort, at least a little.

In the kitchen, politics
In the proportions of spices,
At work and in church,
In frost and in heat,
In the park or the gym, there it is again.
Psychology and physics,
Drama and lyric—
Struggle everywhere.

There’s no hiding from cares —
Even in dreams the irritants pester.
We’ll have to accept and not resist:
I and circumstances — constant companions.

624-9

@@

Gop-stop!
You gave us the hat,
The wallet, all the credit cards,
Signed over the business,
The CAR and other belongings,

And you don’t want to let the “chicks” go?
We warned you the nice way —
Only chopped off 3 fingers,
You’re messing with our HEADS.

Forget country, language, and faith,
Don’t act like a militarist.
We like you, so share sincerely.
You resist
And defend yourself?
Ah, so you’re a Nazi!!!

623-7

@@

A belated thought
Does not want to be thrown as fodder to swine.
It would rather, as an arrow, and with a tip besides
Dead on target even in gale and storm
Fly launched by a rider at a gallop.

It dreams, having read its fill of books,
Watched its fill of films about ideals,
And Don Quixote didn’t make it even there,
Now he overslept and missed it again.

There are no horses, bows and spears forgotten,
Yet one can feel oneself a genius,
A keyboard will suffice —
Just poke a finger at the right key.

622-8

@@

— I love you. ❤️
— And I you — not. ❌
So there is no reciprocity. 🏃‍♀️‍➡️
— I’d wish that you gave yourself to me, 🎬
Renouncing independence. 🕸️

— And I am looking for another 👀
With absolutely the same aim: 🥅
To have him as the obedient one, 🧎
And not become his slave. 🗽

— So maybe we can somehow agree? ❓
I’ll become yours, and you mine, 🤝
And I, and you, will consent to the sacrifice,🔥
Calling ourselves a family of lovers? 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨

621-2

@@

An interrupted thought, a text half-read,
Trust in poisonous rumors,
And suspicions’ sincere advice
Paint my portrait
In advance.

I am not like that, but on the screens
Of pleasant expectations of me
I find myself in bruises and wounds.
And still have persecutions to wait for.

I provoked
And allowed
Calamities to break through —
To share happiness
I turned to friends.
I trusted the wrong ones,
Did not account for
The weakness of the sluices —
Is it not MYSELF I should pity?

620-5

@@

“When they curse, bless” —
Easy to say from the sidelines.
Make a bed for a scoundrel?
Don’t you dare! Cut evil at the root!
Forbid it!
To the reviler and his accomplice.

If I nod to the aggressor, he’ll go further,
Swallow it and lick his chops,
And won’t stoop to even think “sorry.”
A seared conscience does not repent.
Even when it crucifies Christ, —
All around they weep, and it smiles.

The shameless cannot be forgiven.
And the one who came down from heaven,
Even killed, rose again,
To bless.

619-9

@@

Everyone belongs to a clan of killers,
And belonged earlier too —
A great-great-grandfather or great-grandfather once made war,
Killed for freedom, watched the borders.

You won’t find a peaceful clan anymore,
Man has sinned from Adam.
Striving for peace, wherever you go —
You take a scythe
And pitchforks.

There is no trust in memoranda.
To protect yourself and your kin
You must remain a beast,
So as not to become easy prey.

618-8

@@

If only not to be deceived.
The earth will remain a little jug,
They poured in and poured out — I go into eternity.
I look back — a cross-stitch,
Now I brought happiness, now trouble again.

As they splash water, as they knead dough,
As they light bonfires and quench the fire,
The Angels have grown hungry, they want to eat,
Time to come out as bread from under God’s palms.

Struggle in the body — to be saved from death,
Trash did not serve long as wealth.
The little cross reminds that one must die,
So as to be born into a higher life.

617-8

@@

They’ll write not about me at all.
They need an image of their own.
They’ll turn the bright into dark,
Inflate the plot of events.

OR they’ll hide the facts,
Paint in what is not there,
And tomorrow will come to meet
A crown, a bag, or a prison.

And at the parade of life,
However fiercely I resist,
They’ll decide at a meeting
My place amid the quarrels.
So who am I really?
A little cloud in different projections.

616-8

@@

Yesterday a great misfortune happened in my family.

A cousin stabbed his mother and sister to death, gravely wounded another sister and a neighbor…

Behind the bars
Of the cage
The birds sing,
Freedom calls to them,
Neither lock
Nor little door
Can be found,
Nature mocks the prisoner.

He caught the feathered ones,
Kept them in captivity,
Stole the sky from them,
Tied them,
Sold them,
And now he has found himself in their role —
The Most High’s court has caught up with me too.

He left no way out,
And sealed
Every crack…
I asked for forgiveness
For a cruel guilt,
Did not plead, did not prevail…
So at last he decided —
I’ll smash what I can, and perish myself.

615-9

@@

The pleasant snoring of the beloved,
Everything he doesn’t do is a masterpiece,
They’ve dragged the drunk one home —
Here he is in bed, my lion.

I’ll take off his shoes and undress him,
Wipe his dirty body,
I long for him with my soul,
I’ll cover him with kisses, hold him.

People don’t understand:
“And why drag such a one around?”
I can do nothing with myself —
I love him, that’s all.

(The wife refuses to rate this intrigue)

614-0

@@

Map and compass,
Route and backpack,
Advice of seasoned pals —
Proof of seriousness,
Guarantees of an easy trek
That overcome any obstacle.

They wait impatiently,
Call and look out
At the final point
Success, praise and reward.
The pilgrim-seed
A chance arises to plant
In the best soil
In a loosened bed.

Spread yourself, little road,
Accompany us, little clouds, —
It is not a short journey.
For a Christian soul
There is need of support
From mother-earth and father-sky.

613-9

@@

I have no time for trifles,
The main thing is calling me,
I am a fourth-grade pupil,
Without me the game won’t go.

I don’t tie little bows,
They won’t let me ride,
I won’t tell you about algebra,
I’ve got a rage at girls.

Sister is reading a book,
Mom and Dad hurry to the dachas,
Little brother lies in bed.
I run, because the ball is waiting.

612-8

@@

The spiral of the golden ratio
From the well of origins beyond the bounds of stars —
A logical explanation of chaos and disorder,
A sprout from nonbeing to Being.

Does history interest you? I go down the shaft,
Until the pelvis gets stuck or the broad shoulders,
Never having felt contact with zero,
With absolute emptiness.

It is underfoot and on the needle’s tip
Despite lack of intellect and the eyes’ blindness
Together with infinity, the length of eternity,
The Creator united, as nothing and fullness.

611-8

@@

You are not like all the rest.
You walk your own road.
People are angry at you,
But you are needed by God.

Such as you are.
Ivan, Petro or Judas.
Yes, life beats you,
Tightness from every side.

They say you are going to hell…
Despite countless warnings
You do not drop the cross, you carry it —
God appointed you to remain yourself.

610-9

@@

As in the anxious times
Of Batu’s locust swarm
If they do not build walls
The Poles, the khokhols and the Litvins,
Europe will wash itself in blood,
Will also lie down in the trenches,
Having suffered the horrors of war.

Portugal and Spain,
And with them Italy,
Britain in the corner,
And Scandinavia above
Slowly come to their senses,
That the Vikings and the Slavs —
Are their shield. Asia halted.

Those squeezed by two seas
And the horde
Will they join them to their projects?
Or rank even today’s heroes
Among the shadows of forgotten ancestors?

609-8

@@

A happy woman looks beautiful.
Someone has carefully tended her beauty.
So she would feel loved,
Fed her,
Dressed her,
Kissed her
And…
Honored her.

In the orangery
Orchids grow,
Soil and a tropical climate enriched them,
All the privileges —
Conditions of paradise, not locked walls.

I pick — it withers, I water — it blooms.
I love, I keep, I care.
Happy and beautiful. She walks with grace —
I delight, and others admire.

608-8

@@

A civilization in a microscope
With its collective intellect
Through spyglass and binoculars
Tries to make us out as well.
It toils over a cosmic project
How to survive, to forestall collapse.

And we smash their galaxies with a needle’s tip
In an instant with chaos.
For us — in a second,
For them — in billions of years.
Their prophets will exalt
The lab technician as the Universe’s author.

But we too are far from the Creator,
We hunt among the stars — in vain.
In imaginings of heaven and of hell
You might as well think He is not.
Let us not deceive ourselves, He is everywhere,
Every moment. Admit it, people.

607-8

@@

A key without a padlock is a useless bit of tin,
And what’s a lock without a key-code?
As between evil and good, a bond between them —
The soul depends on the idea-key.

Temptation bends it toward crime,
Conscience guards property and honor.
He possesses who has access,
Having marked off his own from another’s.

I’ll bar the gates or let a column through,
I’ll shield from disaster or cause a crash,
I’ll turn the key left or right —
Death or salvation is in my hands.

606-9

@@

When the roles are played well
The deceived husband is happy,
But in suspicions and sick fantasies
The jealous one withers beside the faithful.

They will not laugh at the cuckold,
And the betrayed will not weep,
Marriages will not fall apart,
All the more in mutual hypocrisies.

As if they even reached the goal
Of always behaving nicely,
But it is in its nature, twist it as you will,
For the awl to come out of the sack.

605-9

@@

A snake or a bumblebee, I did not see under the leaves,
Or maybe it was sin that stung?
In safety I lost my vigilance,
Took others’ lightly,
But my own — that’s no joke.

Yes, the doctors are at hand.
I’ll probably run to them.
But first I will sort myself out —
Where I crossed the line.

From medicine the tumor will subside,
The causes, however I might guess,
I will never know, unless He hints
Who sent the signal.

604-9

@@

So far and so near,
Is and is not at once.
Life burns out so quickly,
Yet still has not gone out.

Ours — mine and another’s,
The mortal — in truth eternal,
Nowhere and never — here and already,
The everyday and the strange coexist.

The atheist is right about zero and absence,
Yet the church bell rings!
Empty past and a full futurity —
He is omnipresent.

603-9

@@

The foreign is alluring, one’s own is reliable…
Temptation caresses all the way to the center of happiness,
Fine if it leaves like a dream by morning,
But what if one cannot get free of it?

It whispers that I am special, —
Let the smerds know who the alpha male is…
The treacherous flees from true good,
Swift and sudden is his end.

I choose with my own serf-girl
To break through together toward the kingdom,
Rather than with another’s rich woman
To shrink into worthless slavery.

602-9

@@

Matches and a razor in the cradle of mankind
Tossed in on purpose, or by chance?
Intellect and curiosity fight for experience,
So that a NEW Word might open.

Pain, Fire, Blood and Conflagration.
Cruel lessons, but there is no other way.
Atom, Electricity, the Internet-Network,
Power’s hungry maniac.

The most dangerous forms the best —
Let us learn, brothers and sisters,
Not to burn ourselves, and with ourselves the rest.
We hope Daddy is keeping us in check?

601-9

@@

The opponent boils over — let him blow off steam.
Quarreling is an unkind habit,
Piling on wood and a clamped-down lid
Do not quell the feud.

I will cool down myself, the enemy will calm,
The conflict’s urgency will vanish,
Anger will scatter like gunpowder,
And hatred will later fall still.

When Cain is afraid of himself,
He hides the axe far from trouble.
In sufferings from wars he will learn peace,
And the Lord’s mercy will not pass by.

600-9

@@

Lyric is ashamed, grows awkward,
Has frightened off all the nightingales.
Alarm in the news, evil rages,
Joy has fled to better worlds.

Music plays, the bars are overflowing,
Curfew is about to fall.
In the black sky the clouds thicken,
People hurry into corridors and cellars.

They savored the day, gathered up light,
Turned away from victims and ruins.
Only a lonely rose bloomed in the bed —
It ignored the blasts of mines.

599-9

@@

(Sarcastic)
Do not divide into west and east.
Little Russia is a single country,
Speak only Russian.
The native tongue is not for Ukraine.

Do not divide into west and east,
TOGETHER surrender yourselves to the orcs,
You will suffer more troubles,
Wider streams of blood.

Do not divide into west and east,
The Kremlin liberates you
From language, freedom, and cities —
Luhansk and Donbas await you.

598-8

@@

A random hostage with a shot-through forehead,
I continue to live, having accepted the pain,
Having shared suffering with a people not finished off,
With shards of dreams and hopes.

Once again I receive a bullet
Not in the chest, not in the leg, but again in the brow,
And at the edge of consciousness I clearly hear:
“What to do with him so that he would NOT be?”

And Abel is omnipresent here too —
Whoever hits me, kills himself.
It turns out I am immortal —
The murdered one truly lives.

597-9

@@

To see the soul —
That is what my correspondence is for.
I have read yours and I must
Show mine up close.

Someone will understand the music,
Someone needs words,
Someone focused on a button —
Beauty attracts in it.

Even when they ignore,
It has not grown worse, but easier:
They paint a self-portrait of thought —
I LOOK into the mirror.

596-8

@@

The shards of love and its echoes
Did not become the trash of losses and failures,
Gathered into experience, like wilted cornflowers,
They changed weeping into a marital idyll.

Purity of relations — a fragrance in a flask.
Let the Caligulas laugh at the lack of debauchery.
Their crows in the sky and driven horses,
Not love, but poison in the kisses of their lips.

Family coziness and mutual trust
Are granted to you and me.
Not in vain do Shakespeare’s hints teach:
Better a flask than a heap of dung.

595-9

@@

In trouble and in grief beauty remains,
They stone it, rape it, tear it,
Through tears it smiles,
Provoking in the executioner still greater rage.

Not to yield to untruth,
Not to die, to survive —
Means to win,
To rip out the sting of imperialism by the root,
Having held back evil, and to save others.

The vampire inflates, goes out of himself,
Craves the bloody glory of a gopnik.
He will burst from “velichiye,” and disarm himself,
Splashing out a peace they never even knew.

594-9

@@

The gopnik tests
For weakness and for indifference,
Forces one to resist.
He organizes the forces of good,
Strengthens their commonwealth,
So that at least a rebuke gathers.

They hope for his repentance,
For the conversion of a spoiled conscience,
For compensation of losses —
While courage is lacking.

Until a brave one is found
Not inclined to violence.
It is good if he acts wisely:
Speaks and stops the evil.

593-9

@@

You fill yourself in a day with emotions,
Light, sounds, thoughts,
Smells, touches, portions of food —
The last step leads to the bed.

A full sack
Must be emptied,
Pour the earthly out to heaven,
Having taken a lesson of experience —
Pollen for the bee-soul.

Duties shoved, desires pulled.
Why did I live, what did I achieve?
I gathered for the Creator whom they forgot,
I sought THAT one,
Whom I once knew.

592-9

@@

The old teach the young,
Leaving experience to descendants —
The empty are awaited above,
To be handed to higher riddles.

Children correct the parents —
The missed catches up with the seniors.
And from small teachers
The wise sometimes hear it voiced.

Student and professor on both sides,
A mixed category.
They give and take lessons,
The department and the lecture hall.

591-8

@@

I would not even know who lives in me,
Who breathes through me, who feeds me,
Who actually carries whom,
What it desires, where it steers,

If I had not looked into the soul.
Not an enemy’s, a friend’s, but my own.
Not so lost after all,
But not beautiful either —
The one I must tend.

Whether I speak or listen,
Write a verse or read —
I stop it,
OR I move by it,
As I accept the word,
OR I do not let it through.

590-9

@@

Surrounded by evil,
By its rituals,
I plan to hatch out for holiness,
Having said farewell to the priest
And his cardinals
With a greed for power
In their zeal.

Before freedom the last duty:
“From the sinful choose the most worthy.”
I obtain the answer through a narrow gap —
The Lord offers the most weightless.

Mankind will continue to bear penance,
With hope for a grain of sand,
Not for medicine, but for poison,
Not for a man and not at all for a woman.

589-9

@@

Omnipresent egocentrism
Grants rightness to everyone,
Avoidance of crookedness
Gathers teams in the similar.

Alcoholics, sport,
Scientists, politicians
Unite in different spheres —
Masters of practice and of sophistry,
Specialists on paper.

Personal confidence
Enriches the social.
Weak limitation
Grows into a strong one.

588-8

@@

The crane builds, the bulldozer destroys,
The flower smells, yet the stem pricks.
The fridge freezes, the boiler heats —
What here is good and wherein is evil?

Each is useful — the wise recognize,
The outraged fool will throw half away,
Renounce, disgrace, and condemn.
And so he will live in shortages.

I learn to accept fullness as a blessing,
As the Creator’s care inherited.
So it becomes a daily banner:
To everything its time and order.

587-7

@@

Days burn away, but the star burns too,
Planets smolder out around.
Everything spins and flies somewhere,
Where the Word commanded.

I plan at random, as if it were I,
I flail, I stumble, I find.
Being will not be limited by me —
After myself I will bear heirs.

Whatever the optimist and skeptic quarrel about,
They did not live in vain in the sparks.
They tangled in formulas of arithmetics,
But together they served Ideas.

586-9

@@

There are no sufferings,
There is only feeling
Inside one’s own universe,
Another’s trouble is not trouble…
I understand only some of the talk,

And even that selectively,
With overlays of experience.
Without memory I would not have even that…
The mysterious Word
Belongs to the Lord…
It was He who wanted me to know Him

Through pain, through joy,
Attraction and alienation.
To me He is reality,
Though they consider Him an illusion.

585-7

@@

They whisper around, especially reality:
“He is the boss, and you are a fool.”
Youth is to blame, and now old age too —
It went wrong yesterday and today it is wrong.

Disappointment shortens life,
The wounded ego rebels, boils,
And lesson after lesson invites to peace,
In humiliations teaches wisdom:

“My neighbor is better than I.”
Wife, boss, and tsar,
The beggar by the road, the green snot-nose…
…Let love triumph.
I accept. Let it work,
The gift of service.

584-1

@@

Having agreed to the unattainable,
The promised gnaws at the core,
Desperately pushes, hopelessly pulls
And time for the project is not enough.

Fidelity to an idea skips sleep, skips meals,
Love looks like anger
And untruth serves the truth —
A spy is praised in betrayal.

To serve one’s own,
Inclined to deceive the enemy,
He rips the hide from strangers
Even a liar-politician…
For a word — that is honor.

583-8

@@

Problems have surrounded me,
For I scorned the commandments,
I bother the mechanic, the lawyer, the doctor.
A need arises for their protection —
I have driven the wrong way.

I take pills, I fill out papers,
I spend money and nerves,
I flee from the palace into caves,
Fear and panic without a break.

And what if I RETURN to the Owner’s Life —
Might He receive the prodigal son?
I will not find a better counselor —
People will pardon,
Health will come,
A car will start up.

582-8

@@

Untried — is not friendship.
Yours — white, his — red,
Sharp sabers, prancing horses —
Service to different ideas.

You hack to the left, you slash to the right,
You destroy everything in the path.
But a comrade you pass around kindly,
You lead trouble away from him.

A chest he has shot through
Is carefully bandaged by him
From our deep friendship
Healed without scars.

581-8

@@

A festival of old friendship
And of new acquaintances —
Escape from civilization.
The public one will feel a loner,
The solitary will take ovations.

A plunge into the unusual,
The calloused changes its skin,
The magnificent becomes modest,
The spiritless receives faith.

Freshness of emotions —
Drunk on freedom.
Here it is, the blessed calm.
Welcome! You are born again.

580-8

@@

Paradise exists after all.
How long is hell to torment us?
Peace comes someday.
And is it truly so far?

A kind word to a neighbor,
A memory of a happy dream
Strip away the oppressive extra,
Drive the darkness clean away.

I carry hell and paradise in me
In dreams and in waking.
Weakness in health, strength in sickness —
I myself choose what I live in.

579-9

@@

The universal is composed of trifles,
A detail — galaxies of worlds.
The small has grown into the great,
Googols are no bigger than zeros.

Consciousness will outline itself with a frame,
Will sense a name, will say: “I”,
However it pampers its own,
It will plunge into the abyss of oblivion.

It will vanish without a trace,
To recall itself in other dimensions,
And already new, wholly unaccustomed
It will set about reincarnating.

578-8

@@

Whether the bee gathers or gives —
It is for the beekeeper’s glory.
Whether they kill the cowboy or he kills —
The fatherland will write it in the archives.

Whether I rejoice or weep — I live.
Whether I live or die — to God.
I came from nothing, I go toward everything,
To the Throne I see only the road.

The Creator’s project,
It was not I who planned
About me, mine, and around.
We were not, now we are,
Because He said,
His Word commanded!

577-8

@@

Drawings of sounds, systems of alphabets —
Calling cards of peoples, their identity,
Carriers of knowledge and problems of conflicts,
Ossified through their habitualness.

The ancestors’ inheritance,
Changed and not lost
A history of reforms,
In every letter — its own allegory.

Humankind has always lacked words,
In them our strength and in them our infirmity.
Sounds alone are not enough.
There are 25 of them, combinations without number.

576-8

@@

As soda hisses and seethes from vinegar,
Rhymes and senses tore from the soul.
Now the crater is empty, not a bit of growth,
Where are those former verses?

One has to dig mines,
Clay, ore and basalt,
Without crowbar, pick and shovel.
Inspiration has gone out, alas.

One could forget about it,
Return to vanity,
But, instead of the poison of weekdays,
It pulls toward a “lower” goal!

575-8

@@

I ask for advice to choose perfectly,
I compare information.
How to walk a straight line and not err,
Not to splash into a mess.

More cards in hand — more chances
To react to reality,
Why, sometimes even without finances
Naivety wins.

What I can, I do from my side,
Such is my hunting of happiness,
Much depends on my step,
Though the lazy say: “Fate decides.”

574-8

@@

Yes, there is a problem.
Does it really belong to us to avoid it?
Is it true that from one who bites and beats
The only way is to flee at once?

From a bear, a human, from the viper of fears?
Demons cackle, hell’s messengers.
But having recalled the power of words,
Diplomat-rebels grow up.

They build dams, they fly into space,
They overcome separation from the neighbor,
They tame evil and no longer tremble,
To shake God’s hand.

573-3

@@

I’ll agree with a deviation to the right,
And how else is the planet to go?
Let us submit to authority, but not slyly.
In common sense — forward! To the goal.

So that, shifting the body’s center,
We do not turn into the ditch,
Not stumble, not fall,
Not smash what we carried,
Feel again
That conscience survived,
Not lie, not strike
A compromise with evil.

No way without reforms, let us avoid stagnation,
To overcome new obstacles
You and I will think together as well,
To support the government, as a wise people.

572-1

@@

I lived not that way and not toward there —
Again conscience judges the sinner.
There is strength, there is no goal —
The logistics broke.

I insured myself, peace of soul
I accepted in trust in God,
He dictated verses to me
And pointed the way.

Happy and sad
I return home.
Not satisfied with myself?
My fault:
I doubted in Him.

571-7

@@

I flared up and I burn,
But I could still smolder and smolder.
I found myself on a rocky edge,
And maybe even fly?

It seems I am flying even so,
Having split into countless sparks,
I will rush over the world as an invisible nerve,
Quietly,
Raising no whirlwind.

Let them think: “Nothing happened.
Big deal, he lived. Now I live! —
Everything around yielded itself to me!
Him I will carry someday as a spark!”

570-7

@@

In my own hatred I will not bite my tail,
Especially if I am a serpent.
The enraged one eats himself first,
So it is laid down in nature.

Therefore the snake mostly slithers by,
Does not sting everyone who would kill it
(Wise, the viper, knows this perfectly)…
I go around enemies, so I live longer.

Old, yet I still attend school,
I drink the poison of discontents as medicine,
I continue to polish myself in a circle,
I wear away, I help the good.

569-8

@@

To gorge on good at once —
Is to grow a parasite in oneself.
Better to learn one’s duties,
To reach ecstasy in effort.

For the bee, having brought in honey,
For the queen, having kept the family,
Victory is somewhere there, ahead,
Therefore I remain in the ranks.

The mystery of bliss wraps us:
Among constant anxieties
Endure unto frenzy —
So God has determined.
Do not count it a loss,
Believe, hope and wait!
And after the finish you will receive the wage,
Paradise prepared by Love.

568-9

@@

The one in love sees love in everything,
Anxiety — only danger.
The warlike has not yet conquered all,
The wanderer has packed for a long road.

You are a warrior, David, and you tremble with fear,
And a traveler — you flee from Saul,
You hate, you love,
You cry out
And keep silent,
You weep in psalms, you sing.

Not constantly and not at once
(For many this is not clear)
Bitter and sweet water
Spring from one source.
The turbid falls out as sediment.
For everything its time and order.

567-9

@@

An attentive ear will hear the word,
A sharp mind will recognize even the unsaid.
The thinker holds a conversation with himself,
So that what is imposed may show in thoughts

As blessing or as ruin,
As freedom or as persecution.
The responsible are not others, but you and I
For blood or salvation
Of the generations after us.

“I am nobody here, the politicians are to blame,” —
We say it to soothe ourselves.
Cruel viceroys will not come to power
If we do not agree, do not allow it.

566-9

@@

She stayed as a guest and yesterday felt
That with me she is already bored.
Kisses and caresses, no, she has not forgotten —
But for fullness I am too little for her.

A lover with experience like no one else’s,
With chin lifted, a magnetized gaze
Will not let go of her own, will tear from another’s —
She hurries after the next train.

Do not try to hold her —
A Gypsy wind blows through the cages.
Bless her and take no offense,
Let the next one know bliss as well.

(Song of Songs — to the Muse. The 564th is also for her)

565-0

@@

I never thought that a divorced woman
I would call to myself.
And she has one more suitor
And the husband will not let go.

Her father gathered us
To his house for counsel,
To settle the problem in peace
And wisely join the family.

The present one jerks about—
Too jealous,
The other has been in love for ages.
And I feel sorry for her —
Let her choose herself.

564-3

@@

(My wife gave it a three, I rate it a ten myself, maybe someone won’t begrudge at least a four? :)

Half — is not fullness.
However tightly the squeeze bears down,
The cross is not even close in sight
And a little strength still remains.

The mission is not finished.
While the heart beats and the chest breathes,
The pilgrim’s fate is sealed —
People put their hope in him.

And here is the gallows —
An end to the last suffering.
Already taken, as it turned out,
The crown of thorns was not laid on me.

563-8

@@

Indifference to another’s grief
Weaves a nest in the bushes by the house,
Offended fate will lay eggs in it,
Serpentine, so that evil is remembered,

To fear the bites, to sleep with nightmares,
Having lost the fellow villagers’ trust.
Left alone with the punishments,
Having fallen into trouble oneself.

Are peace of heart and healthy relations
Not worth the chief goal?
Is it not time to come to the thought:
And maybe, after all, to help?

562-9

@@

For a chick to hatch
It must grow from the inside,
And from outside be wrapped and warmed.
First it should learn
To wrestle with problems.
To teach others,
First come of age.

The egg thinks itself wiser than the hen,
The student than the professor, man than God,
Understands better and sees farther,
Acknowledges only itself and no one else.

Regardless of individualism
And of the cold of the cosmos,
However the creature pampers itself,
The soul’s egoism is accepted,
No other way was found for it either —
The Creator warms it too
With a sun for eternity.

561-8

@@

The personal drowns in statistics,
Assembled from particles it becomes the people’s,
Compatriots are praised or trampled in critique —
They take me for evil or for good.

I will confirm or deny,
I will change the stereotypes,
Rise with my chest or throw myself into flight —
I will show my country as she truly is.

They read books about us,
Heard the Kremlin’s propaganda
And at last they recognized:
Ukraine — is me.

560-8

@@

Gave it away — counted as returned to God.
Sold it — stole from Him.
Bought it — laid it up to keep for Him.
Took it free — went into debt.

Pilfered — lost a piece of the soul,
Seized it — burned one’s own salvation,
Defended an orphan — God praised,
Insulted — touched the apple of His eye.

Armed with instructive experience
In the maturity attained
Conscience and scruple will prompt
How to reach eternity.

559-8

@@

You have no business with the war,
Mister missionary.
The country here is not yours and not your trouble,
We are to die, and you — beyond the shore.

It is easy to cheer someone on to death,
But to die yourself…
You have your own understanding of honor.
Go back home.

“Thou shalt not kill!” — you say to son and father,
You haul humanitarian aid from across the sea,
But for us, to keep the commandment,
People are needed, and weapons.

558-0

@@

Marked cards and an ace up the sleeve
Promise a win,
The assistants are his as well,
To develop the large stakes.

Fraud and deceit rule the world.
The main thing is to bribe the enemies,
And that he himself is bribed
He himself should
Forget
And tell
No one.

Ask the supreme one about the peak of the pyramid
On which he has perched so high,
Whether his empire
Will not ride down to hell
When the Most High’s eye blinks?

557-8

@@

The labyrinths of life
With the unknown and dead ends
Seem like freedom at the exit.
In truth a new discovery
With mountains, forests and seas —
Is a riddle in an even larger form.

The victor’s feeling turns out to be infirmity,
Laurel leaves crumble from the wreath,
And paralyzed by the universe’s grandeur
You surrender to the Creator’s mercy.

I am no almighty god in my primitiveness.
Do not bow before me,
I too lack the favor
Of the one who is in the heart and above the head.

556-9

@@

A little house with a stable —
There seems no more modest a place.
Pretty girls all around,
But it was there that She was born.

There she lived in hardship’s embrace,
Kind to people, she honored her parents.
Beloved,
While we grew, I longed for you,
Came to your house.

They called me unhappy.
But to the villagers’ surprise
The worst became the best
With the scent of lilac and roses.

555-6

@@

If they accuse you again
Of harm committed by someone else,
“From a sick head onto a healthy one” —
That is how the people recognize it,

Nobility and love of neighbor,
Readiness for self-abasement —
Are not always incense for the Most High.
And abuses need a cleansing.

You endured till now — a reward awaits,
But now you will act wrongly
If you do not stop the sly one —
God will ask.

554-8

@@

The news demands sensations,
They stay silent about everyday events.
The familiar wrings no ovations —
Neither grief nor grace.

They have begun to ignore tragedy,
Their own, and all the more a stranger’s,
They want to read about changes —
The next widow is not interesting.

They say: “It’s normal, they bombed again today,”
But what is needed, like an elixir,
Is to hear them announce
The long-already-forgotten
Peace.

553-8

@@

But not all is lost, it does not wither.
It is I, the old one, who has gathered years,
While someone is only beginning to live,
Flew to Earth yesterday.

Sound and light amaze him,
The taste of milk and the scent of bodies,
The wide world lures him unaccustomedly,
Quite a few schools await.

And I have sifted, selected the best —
An appendix for the newborn.
In heaven it is easier, for them here it is harder.
This is not the end — the beginning.

552-8

@@

The sun is in everything, strong in light, it passes across the sky…
They will describe it differently.
And some joker will even birth his own —
Will recognize it in a circle or in a fearsome flame.

Walker, Everywhere, Pek, Overhead…
This is how words are formed,
Shame in words,
And glory in words.
In dialects there are countless of them, and in languages:
Borrowed from the ancients in the form of new ones.

Relativity should be remembered,
It denies, and it also approves:
They look out for rain,
And they also run from it.
With fire the sun warms, but hell burns.

551-8

@@

The lion of the empire grew hungry,
Went out hunting.
They grew alarmed in the prairie,
About survival.

They hoped the crocodile
Would rescue the antelope,
Or a herd of gorillas
Would solve the problem.

Justice froze,
Ran to the shelters,
The crocodile and the lion
Share the prey.

550-9

@@

The ego has lost its way among the stars,
Or else the stars swaddle it
In an ovum,
In an ant, in a human,
In a roe
Planets fly
Through cosmic spaces.

They mix among themselves,
They are ground,
They establish themselves as sifted flour,
As a united I
They gather
In the mill that is called
Earth.

You are a grain
And I a speck of dust,
Each has needs of their own.
Personality — and our Little House:
We are the Ego of Earth.

549-9

@@

Alarm rises as a flock of crows,
A pun of emotions,
Threats on every side —
With it I burn indifference.

In shock,
Panic and bustle
The true support of friends
Warns against false moves,
Even if only in sympathy.

Memory will write with a chisel
Of the accumulation of sufferings…
… And then silence comes.
Strangely enough, a cleansing.

548-8

@@

Each reality is a separate game.
At an enterprise, in a country, in an anthill.
A game of silence, or of words
According to the role assigned to the player.

To the sculptor the toy is pliant clay,
To the clown — poses and grimaces,
To the leader — an obedient person,
To the politician — the people’s masses.

A special art — to switch places,
Voluntarily or under pressure,
Peacefully or with battles —
When the toy plays with the owner.

547-9

@@

Vibrations of souls mixed chaotically,
Until suddenly a unison is felt,
A startled heart will beat unusually,
Weekdays will turn into a magic dream.

The slumber will fill with a firework of realities,
You will leap from your place, run as a pair,
Having grabbed bouquets of lilies of the valley,
In dreams you will soar above the clouds.

You will breathe with full lungs
Enriched by the meaning of the session.
Now the main thing is that the growth of amplitude
Not lead to resonance.

546-9

@@

He chased himself
Through tangled labyrinths,
While a straight line led to the finish.
He broke through
With heavy battles.
No peace at all, unbroken war.

Someone will say: unwise.
Here it is, the road.
Why crawl among the bushes?
Because there, where people do not walk,
Where their feet do not step,
You will gather many mushrooms.

From A to Be — an accessible goal.
To ride the beaten path is easy,
Glades and thickets in caring thoughts —
That is the search for paradise through the hell of doubts.

545-9

@@

The wise will take wisdom from the unwise,
The fool will take the wisest for a fool.
Contest between them is barren and sad,
Until the wise pretends to be a pupil.

Temporarily, to avoid quarrels,
The spreading of ill fame,
Gathering instead the nectar
From uncomfortable circumstances.

For an invention, a higher idea
Is at the cutting edge of problems’ halt,
Especially someone’s nonsense
Helps one become an exemplar.

544-8

@@

They come to destroy, and you love them.
The victim is guilty besides.
Enemies call themselves liberators,
They grant the defender the status of executioner.

The world has gone mad,
Traitor-truth
Sold herself for silver.
Noble wrath
Has turned vile.

Suffering past the brim.
Lost paradise
Ever more phantom,
If you don’t take care —
Robbed to the last thread.

543-9

@@

For the sake of memory they accomplish feats,
Clamber onto tribunes, paint pictures,
The Chosen companions give birth,
Expand the borders of the country.

Help one tear away from the matrix:
Hiding in the taiga and a pseudonym,
A return to stone and stick,
To find oneself alone.

The little turtle burrows into the silt
To forget the world of sharks.
To pray for the sinful “geniuses,”
Remembering victims and Draculas,
The monk locks himself in his cell.

542-9

@@

The firefighter is ready to leap
At any hour of the day,
Called to the struggle,
So that grief may not come to pass.

The quiet city envies
His pay for doing nothing,
But suddenly it hears the news:
Someone’s home has burst into flame.

While they put out the fire
He will save several lives.
They will carry the hero in their arms
And forget him in a few days.

541-8

@@

No pity for outsiders,
Until you find yourself out.
It turns out nature
Draws closed graphs.

It lifts you on a wave of success,
If only one could scoop still more stars…
He does not lose his smile
Who takes a step into the valley.

Having accepted the law of gravity,
He calmly crosses out the days,
Gives away shares for free,
For a star is waiting at the bottom.

540-9

@@

Come what may, waking in the morning,
Lady Panic will not stage a scandal.
What was continued yesterday in hourly labor
Will soothe the strain, stave off collapse.

Nerves will hold, emotions stay healthy,
A festive mood, a balanced pressure.
With vigor, in a new encouragement
The diligent will show uncommon skill.

We hear it in the news, we read it in the paper —
The planet is short of peace.
She has found herself in alarm,…
Because someone cannot overcome their own.

539-8

@@

An arrow is aimed point-first into the sky,
It hangs in the clouds like a kite.
It does not fall to earth, is not disappointed,
Guided by the inspiration
Of hopes
And dreams.

Where to get the fuel?
What is the idea?
Life has taken an interest —
It flies home,

To break through
From the human shell,
To reach the cosmic
Egg cell.

538-9

@@

Philosophy longs for wisdom,
Holy Scripture gives it.
It adds confidence and calm courage
To bow to the Most High,
To serve one’s neighbor
And to value one’s own.

Sometimes what I did not ask for comes,
What to do with it — I do not fully know.
But I bear the most fruit
When I receive what I am waiting for.

There is no need to fear stumbling and falling.
It is far worse to stand in place.
So as to betray neither God nor myself,
I go to search.

537-8

@@

Our mother got married again,
The stepfather set about making order,
Took off his belt so we would labor,
And drove us to the garden beds.

We understand life —
You have to work.
We want to and we know how,
And our little field is generous.

The trouble is the drunkards and robbers,
Father’s comrades.
Like him, they are plunderers,
Despots at heart…
We will endure a little longer,
And then we will see.
If he does not come to his senses,
Preferably sooner,
Mother will divorce,
Or we will rise up.

536-7

@@

The goalkeeper, the team’s shield,
Avoids the game and is ashamed,
Stands motionless
By the goalpost,
And let the ball roll as it will.

The stands will whistle, will jeer —
Enemies for joy, his own for shame.
They force the indifferent traitor to be replaced,
To leave the field spat upon.

Foes will mock, friends will steer around him.
He thought he meant something — contempt instead.
But for all the tension around
Conscience will judge him most.

535-7

@@

The herd has scattered, the savanna gone still,
A hungry predator hunts.
The confused young
The fatal burst has passed by.

The horned leader
Fights desperately,
Photographed by tourists.
The gawkers have been seated in a cage-van
And there is no one who would fire a shot.

Safaris have become different,
Gamekeepers now scare the hyenas off —
Tours smell of bigger profits.
Demand has been met,
The spectators have paid,
They have seen blood and they give thanks.

534-8

@@

The world hangs by a hair,
It seems even God is gone.
Banknotes blind a person’s eyes,
By treaties the darkness crawls in.

The soul is for sale, and conscience,
Metastases in the heads and in the churches,
Truth, you are losing consciousness,
Obsessed with money.

Come to your senses, crawl out of your shell,
Let the sky see — you are still alive,
Stop the insatiable ambitions of Rashka.
Show you care, rise against evil!

533-9

@@

What is unsprinkled will not bear fruit.
The sky will water with rain,
A human — with blood and sweat.
At first not at one’s own expense —
The sword will cut down what is another’s,
And save one’s own.

I will sit on the throne, hide abroad,
I will sic the TCC on my neighbor,
I take pride in the heroes at the zero line,
I keep my fists clenched for them.

However I disguise myself, the moment comes:
For the good of my own and of enemies
The ego lies down in the earth.
For their harvest
I will do the utmost —
I will give all of myself.

532-8

@@

A powerful order with many zeros
The client set before me.
I have no idea where to begin.
My capacities are quite small.

Competitors all around slip in bribes,
The tender seems already knocked out from under me,
They set traps on every side,
Offering a re-election.

The planet trembles with fear,
Tears off the scab of leprosy.
The Lord promises He will heal it.
I am who I am,
David of small stature.

531-9

@@

With the help of Hebrew
An explanation of the world.
Thanks to Latin
Order in medicine.
Esperanto appeared,
But it did not take root.

Every village has its own speech,
Every region — its dialect.
Each century alters the language,
And the present one offers its own project.

The recalling of Babylon —
A return home,
To the first source.
To mutual understanding,
To the Creator — creation…
Nobody is interested —
It is pointless to search.
There is no paradise left, and no tower.

530-8

@@

A covenant was made on Golgotha
In red ink with a pro’s flourish.
It is in force to this day.
A ransom for sinners — they are innocent.

The last field for the slave —
An empty space:
Are you willing to go free?
So we think, you and I,
Afraid of falling for a trick.

For it does not work that way with people.
Every swindler in his own eyes
Is the craftiest master
And is looking for a fool.
But here the guarantee is
The cross and the nail…
I suppose I will sign.

529-9

@@

I talked — they came to hate me.
Had I kept silent — they would not have noticed.
Had I thought rightly — all would have been well,
Whether they lay, sat or ran,
They would honor the frightened, praise the brave.

They mock a mindless hero,
A coward without cause is worth pity.
Who cannot listen is not heard,
They will love me when I myself love.

To filter yourself, to sift again,
To shed the extra burden —
There is no point even dreaming of more.
The blessing is good thoughts.

528-8

@@

They keep the nest, though the birds fly out,
They tend it, they build, and time will take it.
They flee from meaning from the start,
So that at the finish what is another’s takes over.

What is another’s — country, family and children.
The genes have been passed to them.
That is why you do not leave the stage —
You bind the future to the past, so as to live.

Doubt sometimes looks in as an inspector,
Stirs you up, conducts an audit,
Puts your thoughts in order
And sets you on the mission again.

527-8

@@

Divorce divides what yesterday was one,
It did not knit. The attempt failed.
Coexistence is dangerous, even criminal,
Love came to hate, though it seemed to love.

Despair, loneliness. A broken trough.
The shards have flown so far there are no shards left.
You think: “The finish, my life is lived out.
A worthless mission, all for nothing.”

You have no idea: the real thing is ahead.
From a new sheet onto a fair copy
With the experience gained, now without the grinding of teeth,
Without the scandals you had almost grown used to.

526-7

@@

Worms will breed even in the clouds,
(iCloud)
You cannot hide from the thieves below even here.
They are inventive at ruling in quarrels —
Even in heaven you cannot be freed from their bonds.

You long to hide in freedom from untruth,
You change passwords, your registered address,
Until the chases force you to surrender
From the pressure of enslavement.

The bandit will not fall behind,
The torment will not cease
Without a sheep’s fangs, without a hare’s hooves,
Without a shield, without a sword and without a bow.

525-9

@@

I painted, I finished, I liked it.
On the canvas that is called one’s own life.
Layer upon layer had to be laid
Various subjects for the paints.

Stretched on a single frame,
They gave no other.
To strive for perfection
Oil and paints call.

Your imagination and memory are the artist’s.
Life is a calling-search-bridge.
Your quality as one pleasing to God
The last stroke will show.

524-9

@@

Today I have not yet written a verse,
So maybe I will write one now.
Yesterday I was tired, so I slept soundly,
In a moment I will wake and stir my thoughts.

I will find the main one and seize it,
Hold it by the hand until night,
I will not tire of its advice,
I will take knowledge and vigor from it.

So as not to run headlong at random,
To gain from its prompts —
There, I have found the thought:
Vigor.

523-8

@@

Silence kills and the word sins,
Thought governs them both.
If it comes late or hurries —
Do not wait for a gift from fate.

Between zero and infinity — heaven’s firmament,
Ropes stretched across it.
To overcome crippling and death,
You have to keep your balance.

Help me catch hold of a safety line,
Help the saving word be recognized,
To learn not to err,
To step onto a sure foundation.

522-8

@@

A storm-tossed world demands the truth.
Everyone goes to it with a lie.
He would tear the corrupt ones apart,
Would consider flawless
Only himself.

Standing at the center, hyenas all around,
With what chalk to circle yourself off from them?
Buddha’s, Christ’s, Avicenna’s,
To make the predators happy and not become the prey?

You cannot do without cunning
When wisdom and holiness fall short.
Maybe we will reach the truth someday,
But for now we perfect our mischief.

521-8

@@

The way of the samurai is to hold to honor
In loyalty to a lord with truth as his crest,
Not to doubt at the crossroads,
With a sword in every direction,
With an unturning brow.

Constant resolve to cut evil short,
To feel it at your back, to keep watch in sleep,
Not to sell yourself, and to love nobly —
Of these threads the years and days are woven.

The baseness of betrayal
To manage to stand against.
Not to perish in shame,
But to truly live,
Even after death not to drop the weapon,
Not to let it go from cooling hands.

520-8

@@

My wretched fate.
Of my parents, my son and grandson.
My land is not my land,
I am parted from my own.

To everyone I am a stranger,
And not even kin to myself.
Spineless as I am —
That is why I am poor.

The Synod decides for me,
A pack of the sick who would rule.
Am I not a people?
Enough of hiding in holes!

519-8

@@

She sucked it dry and left.
I am not the first, and I am not the last.
We wither so that she may bloom
In the cruel contest for laurels.

Poetry’s beauty is in our exhaustion,
In the sleepless searches for words.
All other cares forgotten and abandoned,
We do not notice the passing of days.

You are worth that we bow to you.
You are holy, and our soul is sinful.
You know everything, from you we learn.
We dry up, and that is why you are eternal.

518-8

@@

The best warming station is at home.
And what if at home there is no warmth?
And you are needed by no one,
In autumn and spring, and in summer it is winter.

He carried firewood into the house, but it will not burn.
They will say: “That’s the kind of master he is.
And let him not trouble our heads —
A wretched man, and we feel sorry for him.”

But he will find a lonely one across the ocean,
At the edge of the earth, it is hardly believable.
Entirely by chance, by an absent plan —
And both will be warmed.

517-9

@@

A remnant will remain that was lucky
To taste victory.
And the one that undergoes the crucible of defeat,
Having hidden the need to recover the losses.

Better for the one who dies first,
Does not wail for his own and does not choke the others,
He is the slyest — he rests,
Among the living he does not multiply sin.

The good is relative, it is in the breast,
There where the soul lives
In the pious people,
Or there where it has gone.

516-9

@@

We left peace, toward peace we go
Through the tension between the poles,
To learn to avoid problems
According to the Creator’s program.

A situation is a challenge. It freezes — it burns.
At once we need without-peka.
It is hard to hide, the threat grows,
From everywhere not-without-peka menaces.

One cannot do without not-without-peka,
It stimulates life,
Not WITHout not-without-peka they once fought,
Not without not-bes not-without-peka stands watch.

(A gag on the nonexistent word Peka)

515-8

@@

You attack the weaker,
The strangers and our own?
Three endure, and the fifth will rise.
You will hit resistance — then do not cry.
You will have to pay for the wounds inflicted —
There will not be enough money, however rich you are.

I will praise, then they will praise me.
I humble — they will humble me.
Justice has a long memory,
Reward and punishment will not pass by.

Will they bury you as a great one in a mausoleum wall,
And shove the innocent into Babi Yar?
The cries of victims and executioners are recorded —
Death will not hide it,
Justice waits,
Sooner or later it will sort out the nightmare.

514-8

@@

Gifts are brought for two reasons:
Gratitude or a bribe.
Among all peoples and in all countries
A gift asks and thanks.

The grateful thank, the grabbers ask,
They thank the good, they flatter the wicked.
A gift will please, will relieve the tension,
The hard and cruel will become soft.

Who gives to others and does not take,
Having helped with good, goes after the next,
That one gains honor among people and with God,
Places a deposit in the heavenly account.

513-8

@@

I gathered stones —
Time to scatter them.
So justice commands.
Enough chasing fate and fleeing it —
Here is the perfect chance:
Give yourself to her, to catch her.

The circle has closed — the mission is complete,
Having started from zero, I reached zero…
But the mystery of life does not decide it so:
At the start with you was
A twelve,
And at the finish she is yours as well.

Mourn if you want, or take pride,
Having named the Spark’s moment immortality.
Agree or argue:
You for eternity are clay, and she is the instrument.

512-9

@@

Sleeplessness at night —
That is prayer itself,
A milling, a grinding,
A lessening of the self.
A chase after clarity.
But when there is ignoring,
The teacher walks away.

Anxiety, stress, the kidneys have worked,
The liver calls to the toilet.
The clock hand has not yet touched four —
The poet suffers in prayer.

Over him the Word of the day is at work,
Gives a sword, a shield, and a helmet.
Bestows strength for living,
To carry dignity, not shame.

511-8

@@

Shards of feelings,
Fragments of what was lived
Will compose any pattern you like —
By the mouths
And the hands
Of masters,
Or of frauds.
From the familiar and the habitual
A masterpiece or a monstrosity.

Anecdote and truth,
A dry cue and a melodious song
Carry what was taken yesterday into tomorrow —
It served before, it will serve after as well.

You think — unseen?
You say, you have not yet heard?
What is found was once lost,
The future is the resurrected past.

510-8

@@

Banknotes attract, promise prosperity,
They orient the choice of profession.
Toward a life in New York or in Chicago,
If not in Germany, then at least in Greece.

The calling somehow pays no mind to money.
On the contrary, it leaves you with a sack —
The artist in rags tends to the spiritual,
Neglects the bodily, yet with a proud bearing.

Duties press, and you strain toward freedom,
To rule, to serve — two aims.
Like a fish from under the ice gasping for air, you struggle
To care for the body and save the soul.

509-9

@@

Quiet… It comes… Do not frighten it.
Not a rustle. Barely breathe.
You have waited long. And wait still,
Do not rush, listen closely, expect.

Steps are not yet heard, nor words, nor a whisper,
Only a thought-feather has touched —
Do not drive it at once to a grinding,
So as not to startle, so it does not deflate.

Let there be noise in the yard
And the retinue ready to depart —
Calibrates the intention rightly
A conversation in the Holy of Holies.

508-9

@@

You came in wreaths, in royal robes —
To me, to a commoner
(Big deal, in the States),
You poured fragrant myrrh into the vessels.

Who am I for Your caresses?
… The noble are not always pleasant to You —
So I love You without jealousy,
And to please You — a zealous desire.

Gentle princess,
Do not let me be shamed.
Teach me to the level
Of filling with honor.

(To the Wisdom of Poetry)

507-9

@@

I drift as a little cloud in verses,
Sometimes in better, sometimes in worse —
Do not look for me in relics.
And who needs me more
On overcrowded squares?

Unnoticed I will cover from the sun
With shade over your heads.
Do not take pride in me and do not be ashamed —
For you I am absent; in truth I am with you.

Let it scorch from above —
I offer myself to the luminary gladly,
And others gather in line behind me
As shadow, rains, snows, or hail.

506-9

@@

In old age he hid a stash.
Especially from his wife, children, and grandchildren.
So they would not track it — he had a little task:
He watched the shadows, listened to the sounds.

He confided to the most honest outsider
About the place not long before death,
Asked him to tell the widow
After he was to die.

Without warning, he hid it again.
Securely, no one will find it.
Unexpectedly he gave his soul to God.
There is no treasure — who even looked.
He outwitted everyone, even himself.

505-8

@@

Tomorrow I will become ridiculous,
Backward and primitive,
Dreams will lead me into a dead end.
I hope they will not think me too guilty,
For I have long unlearned to justify myself.

To admit weakness in old age,
To find peace in the harbor of old age,
As in a mirror, to drown in grandchildren’s bloom —
It is worth reaching such a comma.

To the comma. For the path continues,
A new start lies ahead.
The future waits on the experience of what was lived,
To the student with a diploma, the gift of practice.

504-6

@@

I live to take, having left a trace…
…Traces are swept and washed away.
Lifted to the clouds, it falls with rain,
To return and perfect the world.

He left— they took.
The equipment, the remains, and the memory.
They hauled it all away
And did not recall
Where they buried him,
Even.

What I snatched I’ll give to the office,
They’ll appraise it, send the gains back.
A record of the soul, healthy
Or sick,
They’ll enter in the Book of Life.

503-8

@@

To the next attempt to save the language
The reaction — Russian doesn’t bother us,
Ukrainian loyalty again and again
Steps on the same rake.

Hearing from afar “nye panimayu,”
The tongue suddenly betrays,
At once I forget my native one,
I am more used to the foreign.

Children grow, and after them grandchildren.
Let us be ready, so they do not surprise us,
If soon we have to hear
“We are Russians, because our parents
Spoke Russian.”

502-9

@@

I look at the mountains,
Someone is interested in the forest,
Someone talks about the war,
Someone’s nose is stuffed.

Everyone has their own problems
And everyone has their own ache.
That is why on different themes
It boils in our thoughts.

You tell best about your own,
Another’s soul is fog.
You counsel yourself in verse,
And let each one search in themselves.

501-7

@@

The flame of his embrace is insatiable,
The doomed burn in it to ash,
Friends will leave, their curiosity will vanish,
For it was not for them you were the sacrifice.

The word lured you,
You reached with sparks toward the clouds,
Yet even as smoke you drifted not for long
And the heat warmed no one.

No one cares, each has their own trouble,
No one needs your coming back,
But suddenly you will grasp another demand:
You stepped out of the house — the whole street is yours.

(The Word and the Soul)

500-9

@@

If the Throne is a logical reality,
And not a religious invention,
They will judge the work as noble,
Not as a degenerate’s cunning.

Not for a stranger’s eye,
Not for earthly glory
Is high morality,
For them to lie with it.

The absence of truth in the world —
A quiver for the arrow
That will hit its mark
As the hunter aims it.

499-8

@@

Key-words
To the heart, to money, to flights
Lead out of various plights.
With passwords — one’s own,
Without them — strangers.

Knowledge is words.
The initiated in them pass through.
No knowledge,
Then no success.
Whoever ignores them harms himself.

Hard to carry in the head —
A computer, a phone, paper
Will help you remember.
Passwords and key-words
Must be kept.

498-9

@@

Habit binds one to a task,
Constant and strong, it gives a result,
It points to the owner’s character,
Becomes the cause of tragedies and feast days.

A good one brings glory,
A bad one — mockery and shame,
With the first, life is interesting,
The second leads into trouble.

Do they choose it, or does it find them?
Who is to blame, who deserves praise?
Fate decides, the laws of nature.
Person or habit — that is their scale.

497-9

@@

The series is more interesting than one’s own life,
Evening screens finally flare up,
The events of the day —
Useless trash,
Other people’s fantasies — the source of mood.

Don’t be ashamed, you are not a parasite,
And let conscience not judge you for the parallel:
The world is composed of overlays of realities,
And people lived this way before you.

They read books, wrote works,
Told stories, gossiped,
Don’t worry, you are not sick either,
They simply did not have the internet then.

496-9

@@

Mother Earth, you will embrace and kiss,
Take the child into the womb again
When you have taught and prepared
The Father’s soul for the eternal heavens.

And while she is inseparable from the body
She is joyful or sad,
Lives at full voice or without sound —
Peace and war form her.

She meets like-minded friends,
The spittle and poison of enemies,
To perfect herself in thought —
So Papa wished.

495-9

@@

From a deep well the water is healing,
On the surface it is used — filtered, at best.
The hint of the subconscious is deathless,
A surface thought is uncalibrated.

Intuition is the experience of ancestors
Gathered in treasuries,
Gold pollen from volumes of notes,
Passed to descendants as neutrons.

The winnowing and cleansing
Of train-cars of thought-ore —
This is calibration and the raising of the grade
For the next generations of neutrons.

494-8

@@

The newborn enters a greater glory,
Previous worlds bid him farewell,
They entrust him a more majestic task —
Not to stumble as an abortion, but to keep growing.

The lower pushes, the upper awaits,
Today the sprouts, tomorrow the fruit.
Which? Consciousness decides,
The level of truth it managed to reach.

Truth consists in the striving,
At every stage it renews the banner.
Pleasure is in the process, not in attainment,
That is why I do not regret that I did not attain.

493-9

@@

Adam lay down with the question “what for?”
In full plenty throughout eternity,
And suddenly infinity grew cramped
From the lack of any need to change what is.

A rusted wagon stood at a dead end,
Thinking: “I’ll stay right here on the siding.”
Unexpectedly the wheels screeched —
A locomotive pulled it down the rails.

They took a rib, Eve appeared,
And with her
Ideas,
Cargoes and routes
For home and for the womb —
You will have to forget melancholy and peace.

492-9

@@

Critics are not loved, they are avoided,
But you will not find better teachers.
The well-wishers teach as well,
But they do not push you
To go faster.

If you cannot cover the distance, you will learn resistance.
One way or another, thank the enemy.
Do not fear a sharp rebuke,
Grown kinder from evil, drive evil away.

When the foe comes to kill,
Gather in yourself the wisdom to stand with your chest,
So that, taught by him, you find something to say,
Save village and city from disaster.

491-8

@@

At the end of the tunnel, new horizons
For idea, thought, word, and deeds.
In discomfort through a tight die’s hole
You surface into a space you did not know.

A wall at the brow threatens collapse,
They already carry you to the graveyard, clear you from the earth —
Flying the tunnel with unmeasured momentum
Is the invisible capsule of the soul’s immortality.

This journey excites and is full of doubts,
The fear of death frightens without measure.
And no wonder — the fullness is ineffable,
Bliss and ecstasy in the presence of faith.

490-8

@@

They forced a tube onto the joined wires,
Turned it left, fused the contact,
Were perfecting yet another little soul
And again something went wrong.

They added another moron to society,
Morons released a moron from the laboratory,
They have already talked the next victim into it
And instead of growing him they gelded him again.

In a group of morons I, a moron myself,
Stroll along the shore —
Among healthy souls, uncrippled bodies
I greet the morons in lab coats as kin.

(Propaganda)

489-8

@@

&@
Real roads are paved with mirages,
Dreams call us to bring the universe to life.
At first glance the power is lacking,
Then suddenly — civilization at the crossroads.

You have not even thought, and someone has already done it,
Imagination also competes.
Others have passed where you have not walked,
The bio-anthill seethes and swirls.

Someone was trampled, someone tramples himself,
What the scramble is for, they never fully said.
Make way for new mirages!
For the affirmation of complete Glory.

488-9

@@

Trap.
Betrayed.
After long years of faithfulness.
She does not know yet — I have already lost her…
I did not expect such baseness of myself.

A fog dragged over my mind,
A chance beauty drew me in,
No words can cover the deceit,
And without my destined one I will not live.

The whole world is indifferent,
Only she alone
Takes care of me.
Oh, how the heart tears and grieves —
She will lose her soul,
My beloved wife,
When she is disappointed in me.

487-8

@@

Dreams have swapped places with reality,
I want to fall asleep instead of waking.
In dreams I drink myself full of joy,
To be swallowed again by days of anxiety.

I would rather call the dreams my life,
The nightmares of days a fog of sleep,
They said that to live is to suffer,
But I, when I sleep, am truly alive.

The cables were thrown on the wrong terminals,
Reality and dreams got crossed.
Hands of war, you have bent something,
Switch my poles back.

486-7

@@

While the cans were filling with milk,
The needy took and said
That you are good.
Then suddenly you stopped giving milk.
You were supposed to bring
Big money.
Not fully ready, it turned out.
Shame on the cow!

Yesterday’s best become the worst —
To market with them, or to meat!
They scheme to replace them with others —
The appetites of the greedy go off the scale at times.

No claims against the indifferent,
Useless to wait for handouts from them,
Even murderers are forgiven, in a sense —
Whoever used to give
And stopped
Is the one to blame.

(The wife said: “This is life.”)

485-8

@@

Friendship is cracking,
Suspicion paints pictures of insults.
From self-pity the soul aches —
It looks outward, hunting for causes.

Nearest at hand, the one who shared bread,
Not so much of flour as of the heart —
Why was he silent, or said the wrong thing?
Who is to blame? He is first.

A pleased enemy, sympathizing, will listen,
Will rejoice — the opponent has weakened.
Later a friend will untangle him from the web,
And a saddened slave will come out free.

484-8

@@

The one who has cared for us from the beginning
Entrusts us to parents and gives us teachers,
Whose love has no bound and no measure,
Wanted to grow something great from nothing.

He called from nothing, taught us to speak,
From cradle and school gathered us into society,
Through death he leads us to truly live,
So that the one who killed
Would have no more right.

He waters and feeds at the lower levels,
Uses circumstances as intermediaries.
He calls us home no longer by families,
But into a family of descendants and forebears.

483-9

@@

They love for beauty, attention, tenderness,
Paper drew you and me together.
Then came care and fidelity,
And first there was a test and a written piece.

A beautiful soul hid her gaze,
Shy of words, she was silent.
Not by chance we found ourselves side by side —
On the page I read your soul.

Do not look my way, do not say a thing,
I know you are mine, a magnet between us.
Neither you nor I need anyone,
The world is filled with you and me alone.

482-9

@@

Live a lifetime, learn a lifetime.
That is, take from those around you.
Knowledge will pile up someday
With the need to speak it out.

And even if no one needs it,
What was said to oneself
Will go out and come home
In more perfect phrases.

Take from others, honor teachers,
Give thanks for their wise words,
So that at last you too understand:
The best counselor for you is you.

481-7

@@

Ukraine, a seed cucumber
They trample for ages,
Wipe out the kin,
And he, in cucumbers,
By the laws of the tribe,
Unceasingly, every way,
Fills the world.

They take her into bondage,
From grief she flees as a fugitive,
Under occupiers she grew used to pain,
She defends independence with shield and sword.

And now they wait for replenishment,
Argentina, Canada, and Taiwan.
The Russians wait,
Even as they kill her
Against her efforts to stand.

480-8

@@

Why should a miner buy coal?
He brings it home in his pockets.
Does a host go to someone else’s wedding
When he can invite guests of his own?

Goods in demand — they sell,
A kopeck pays for them,
You pour into a carafe, for it will not spill,
Unless of course it is a watering can.

The trembita blows out sound
To drive the silence off,
The reader does not write — he reads,
So there is something to read — I write.

479-8

@@

Yesterday these verses did not exist,
Tomorrow — they are trash.
Only what conscience felt today,
That is what is called real life.

Plans for the future and regret for the past
Rob the present.
If you have square — don’t grieve for round,
If there is no sack, a handful will feed you.

In the given moment your gratitude decides:
You hold to the rails or have flown down the embankment,
What brakes, and what speeds up,
Grants abundance or brings to tears.

478-9

@@

The word goes beyond the bounds of meaning,
It seeks another,
A new one or the one that was lost,
In a team — a greater sense.

From nothing it encompasses everything,
The ether is still too empty,
It carries unusual notions
Into the anxious idea of comfort.

It strives for perfection, tears through the thickets,
Goaded from behind it advances under duress.
One will have to lie under evolution’s roller —
It is so determined.

477-8

@@

Poets, like manure.
A dossier on each about himself.
Each one’s weapon is visible,
It is unserious or it hits painfully.

It troubled the author, so he wrote,
The reader is indifferent, but for him — a volcano.
From the depths of the subconscious he learned, came to know
How to achieve, avoiding wounds.

Report less to headquarters.
Whether they praise or condemn — the point is not that,
But whether he managed to become a human,
To return home a grown man.

476-8

@@

One day far from the city
In the middle of a field
Suddenly
Someone burst.

Sworn brothers were loafing nearby,
A watermelon suddenly split.
Ripe, dark-red, juicy.
Kherson.

No matter that the farmer was gathering hops.
Brothers and sisters marveled,
And there was no one with a knife.

The watermelon proclaimed Glory to Life !

475-9

@@

A mirror is meant to look at oneself,
And to watch the surroundings.
It tears bits of sun for someone,
Scares someone, and for someone — encouragement.

Mirrors are placed all around,
But one important one is mounted inside.
You look into it again and again,
You scan what is your own, hidden from others.

They cut paths,
The mirrors in the eyes,
They seek out differences
In friends and in enemies.

474-7

@@

It does not trouble the indifferent, does not touch the anxious.
The plastic and unhardened interest it.
It bypasses the egoist,
It befriends souls, not the body.

The self-assured will stumble,
The too-taut will snap,
The slack will not ring —
Try to find the middle.
If there are no thoughts, they will not speak,
The trouble is to chatter without stopping.

Inspiration is extremely sensitive
And with its fingers it touches those
Who in grief recognize the happy
And play with genuine life.

473-9

@@

To pity a tree, or to envy it?
Who among us has it better, and who worse?
It does not walk, as I do, to climb onto me,
Yet it is taller than I and greater in mass.

I wander the world and am everywhere,
I sate the eyes and the body’s states,
Mostly absent, I leave the home,
While it is faithful to it, fused to the earth.

I too will stop, they will put me in a box,
While they will saw it down, cut it into pieces —
People must search for their stop,
And trees will leave theirs.

472-7

@@

He lived actively, gathered an inheritance —
Nobody even to haul it to the dump.
He mocked, he jeered at the elders,
To take with him into the grave,
Like they did, he could not —
Death’s high threshold got in the way.

Why then does instinct call to hoard?
To one sprinkled with earth the surface is indifferent.
It is the Sun that writes patterns on the darkness,
On feminine principles with the principles of a man.

Life arises,
The partly frozen melts.
It flies up to the clouds again for merging —
The illuminated form is famed for its changes.

471-8

@@

A year of collaboration with poetry is passing,
It asks to be summed up.
I combined it with family, with profession,
To open my eyes wider to the world.

Above all — for myself,
Asking of heaven.
I am visible to it as well.
I do not want to walk in darkness,
First one must help oneself,
And not instruct the neighbor slyly.

Thank You, Teacher, for the treasures.
Especially on this Christmas day.
Keep leading so wonderfully onward.
Your Love is an unsurpassed miracle.

470-8

@@

Stuffed with clay or cotton
Even with a zealous attempt
Imagination will not explode,
You cannot split with the blunt of a log,
Nothing arises without a cause,
After hard fatigue it is pleasant to rest.

A reaction to a stimulus,
Coordinated behavior —
As the participant,
So the evaluation.

Sometimes to reach something great,
Seemingly even devoid of sense —
It is useful to know:
If it is the right,
Even a quiet
Word is enough to say.

469-7

@@

To lay freedom on bayonets,
To tend the empire’s welfare,
To shepherd one’s own peoples,
To drive off foreign wolves —
Intercontinental artillery is not enough.
One must have the fear of God.

The most powerful ruler,
Enemy to people and to God —
A worthless master,
His gains are dust.

He will conquer half the world,
Turn it to ruin,
Call down all curses upon himself,
He will enter history without a doubt —
Of his own shame
And his country’s cruelty
He will write in blood into the centuries.

468-9

@@

Honey is sweet but sticky,
The bee stings, yet is surrounded by love.
A match is relatively light,
But the ruin is heavy, crushed by fire.

A word is only sound,
A little wave of air. No hands needed —
It will do so much.
It will lead to partings
Or speak so kindly
That it lifts the soul’s torment.
The throat only scrapes — from nothing
It will revive strength,
Comfort the sad,
Encourage the weak.

Sweet, sticky, stinging, healing,
Light and heavy always with you.
Paralyzing or mighty
It capitulates or calls to battle.

467-9

@@

A sin — to keep reminding of the war,
A sin — to forget it entirely,
A sin — to flee, abandon and betray,
A sin — to stay, not to hear the warnings.

A sin — to wait in a hopeless place,
A sin — to run headlong into the flame,
A sin — desertion in a hurry,
Not to run to the bomb shelter, to burn in the apartment.

Sin in everything, and where is holiness?…
… To remind and to forget,
To hold and to abandon.
If only we could get our bearings,
To listen or to ignore.
Let childhood guess, let old age not stumble —
To hide or to run out.
When to drown and where to burn —
To know with certainty.
Not to err among the tribunes of heaven.

466-8

@@

Advisors are needed by everyone
Who makes important decisions —
Improvement for their own, worsening for enemies
In peaceful conditions or in a time of alarm.

A ruler am I too, though I have no servants —
I govern the body, I serve the soul.
Left or right — I don’t know at once,
They help,
Others’ thoughts.

You are better, teach the unwise:
Even in disputes with those wiser than I
I listen to the truly wise,
Without driving away those worse than him either.

465-9

@@

Drink a friend. You are not a vampire —
It is pleasant for him to give himself to you.
But remember, only so long
As he wants to play with you,

As he is still interesting to you.
So compulsion does not set you at odds,
So sly calculation does not creep in,
Warmed by someone.

Companionship is a gift of God,
A sunny glade in a dark forest,
A gap among solid clouds —
In a certain season and a certain place.

464-8

@@

Who is Abel?
A myth, a legend, inventions.
In every contest the stronger wins.
He survived — so he is Cain,
He killed the holy one.
Thus the worse one triumphs.

For the murderer — glory, compliments and honors,
Pyramids, tombs and mausoleums.
To destroy a brother,
To take the crown,
To turn beast over it —
Turns out to be a mark of valor.

But the true crown is for those who suffered,
For those who did not steal,
Did not take,
But paid.
Who with love stopped
The rabid,
Who rose from the dead
And came alive for the Kingdom.

463-8

@@

A proud gait, but the eyes are glass —
Body language betrays him all the same.
He has reached success, victory — not yet.
He chooses a victim — he weighs it.

The rabble needs leaders
To be afraid of them —
On land, in the sky and on water
To train them to hold to discipline.

Morality is lacking— a stick is needed.
They will put the state and scepter in his hands.
But when the ruler bites too much —
They will take even him down from the throne.

462-7

@@

Yesterday’s brothers, inseparable friends
Were split by a blast wave —
War set them at odds.
It is far away,
Yet hatred rolled
Not only through the district —
Through the Americas and Europes it passed with a plow.

The key to love has still not been found,
Though it seemed they held it in their hands.
Each of us separately strives for greatness,
We display holiness, and drown in sins.

Death’s sting is so tireless,
And life calls to the summit of salvation,
Where understanding will at last be reached,
Peace and bliss — complete.

461-8

@@

Through a tunnel with no navigator to the mountain’s other side —
Unexpected vistas wait there.
Many have spoken of them,
But never saw them themselves — they were told.

And those who told it fantasized,
Only guessed, imagined.
I will check myself
And finally know.
I would tell you too,
But I have no chance.

They decreed from outside:
That by faith we should reach fullness,
The path is one-way.
They ordered no return to be laid.

460-9

@@

Like an ant that blew on a planet,
And it whirled around its axis —
That’s how the poet itched to say it,
So everyone would clap at once.

Effect and cause
Cannot switch places.
There is an order, an age-old pattern.
Society shapes the human,
Under God, though godless —
Whether they honor the law or break it.

Reaches toward heaven to rule the world,
Tramples the Earth as its owner.
Are they our parents, or we their children?
Is fire more important, or the extinguisher?

459-7

@@

The old one plucks out her own feathers,
To warm and strengthen the nest,
She trades her Name for a pseudonym,
She gives herself away so that the birds may live.

Just imagine lipstick on a beak,
Lacquered claws, a painted crest —
Neatness is pleasant among the people,
Yet maidenhood and marriage have been left behind.

Self-preservation has established itself,
Has gathered quite a few years,
Has laid eggs, has spawned children,
And now the line must be continued.

458-8

@@

&@
Each of us is a note for a cacophony.
Together — a grandiose orchestra.
A mosquito does not hear the whole symphony,
Has no notion of the full register.

It considers its own squeaking pointless
And does not guess at the great gift —
At the price of life, by a common effort
It will cause… a strike of palms…

Listen…
Around and inside there is music:
Mountains, a grain of sand, elephants.
Thunder out of a clear sky, the fastening of a button,
The scrape of a little feather
and the whisper of war.

457-8

@@

The grateful one’s dreams are already being fulfilled,
He opened the gates to them hospitably.
You greedy ones chase after happiness —
And it runs away, though it seemed you had caught it.

It entrusted itself — which is not the same as being seized.
A kind fate has a sensitive soul.
It always wanted to side with the good —
Without a whip, without the lure of a coin.

A cage, even a spacious one,
Will someday empty,
For the prey will escape.
Filled to the brim is the granary
Of the grateful. And it will fill still more.

456-8

@@

They turn away from the famous one.
He is friends with glory, and who am I?
Stars gather around him,
They carry him in their arms, yet why is he sad?

A crowd surrounds him, ovations do not fall silent,
They shove and they envy, yet all around are strangers.
Even having become a treasure of the nation,
There is no soul to press to his chest.

Greatness attracts everyone
Without it they are mournful.
Modesty reminds us:
Idols are very lonely.

455-8

@@

Placed on the edge between left and right,
Long ago she became the center between them.
Constantly plowed over by cunning neighbors,
She dreamed of independence,
And at times even had it.

For a short time. While the exhausted hordes
Offended and shamed
Gathered their strength,
Mended their broken plows and swords
And secretly laid plans of revenge.

Reborn empires did not spare people,
They stirred up the fires of propaganda,
They harnessed the iron horses once more,
In a new way they plowed the borders.

454-6

@@

In uncontrolled jealousy
Crocodile teeth and a wide throat.
Why rush to fall into them?
Is it not better, in emotions subdued,
To stand proud —
To save someone and rescue oneself.

With an even bearing, a lifted face,
A well-aimed word and a clean gaze.
Not to surrender oneself, and those bent by fate
To help
By personal example.

Those paralyzed by feelings
In love, in finances, at work,
Surrounding oneself with healthy thoughts,
To point the way out for soul and flesh.

453-7

@@

Do not pair dried fish with meat cutlets,
Do not wash wine down with milk.
Incompatible dishes are not only a matter of etiquette,
They will not be accepted by the stomach itself.

Some combinations beg to be divided,
Water will in no way mix with fire.
Wheels will not roll uphill by themselves.
A motor turns them, or a horse pulls them.

The nature of engines and of horses is different,
As are the bearings of vocations.
Let us recognize it at the start, before it is too late:
Two plus two does not always come out four.

452-8

@@

The imagined strikes sparks,
The imagined puts out fires.
The imagined smashes boundaries,
The imagined wants to sit down.

The imagined weeps,
The imagined smiles.
The imagined offends,
The imagined takes offense.

What to imagine,
I must choose:
What to caress,
And what to drive out of myself.

451-7

@@

A well-known song of the “good” Russians:
“Do not take us for villains.
It is the unworthy authorities, not us.
They ordered us,
Gave us rubles —
That is why we kill
And ourselves we die.
They set us on you,
And we
Do not want war.

We will yet rise from our knees, the government will change,
We will live in a new way — we will make peace.
They will respect us,
They will speak Russian,
Russia will expand,
We will embrace again.

You will yet see how good we are.
On your ruins, in your rear.
And for now
It is not we who are guilty,
But the money.
Do not judge us, ask Moscow.”

450-8

@@

Where does an idea come from?
Yesterday I prepared the soil for it.
Today my field is for sale,
The invisible farmer knew what he was buying.

Fertile for sport, science or song,
War or love, money or misfortune —
Will I climb the mountain or fall into the abyss —
My new master will sow thoughts.

The grain will sprout. Will I weed or tear it out —
Depends on me and the neighboring lords.
Will I take root in the summit or be flung into the crater —
It is in the will of the micro- and macroworlds.

449-8

@@

QR, barcodes, words, programs,
Rises, dips, ones, zeroes,
To meet in tastes,
To coincide in thoughts.
To appear, to vanish from the surface of the earth.

With one’s presence to make someone happy,
Not to become an obstacle on the highway,
To pour a heap of grievances on a scoundrel,
To settle onto a horse, and it will carry you.

Crawl up and jump back,
Flee and come.
Release and support —

Only agree it with the code.

448-8

@@

“Wasser” falls from the sky,
From “aqua” and with “aqua” the world is made.
“Voda” and “hydro” govern and steer,
“Water” whirls,
Like the word “hello”.

“Pani” binds,
“Rano” runs,
“Ura” composes,
“Vero” seethes.

We drink her,
With her we water.
Everywhere with her, wherever we go.
Without her we have nothing —
By her we live.

447-7

@@

Where you took,
There you will have to return.
Where you invested,
From there you will also take.
Not always at once, — sometimes one waits long,
But you will not bypass justice.

You sowed good –
Bread will come floating in,
Misfortune on your head — for former evil.
Contempt for father and mother
Will turn descendants into a nest of snakes.

Boomerang and karma —
Words foreign to us,
But cause and effect are easy to understand.
Tomorrow the present poor
Will grow rich.
After winter, come flying, stork.

446-8

@@

The good and the evil
Across the face of the Earth,
Around the Sun and in the orbits of Galaxies
On different scales of different glory
Accomplish grand and tiny deeds,
Where the MegaUniverse is a worthless scrap.

Where a bacterium cannot imagine
The boundary of a stadium.
It hates, it loves,
It hurries home.

Where atoms and electrons
Have their own measures of time —
By their laws
I enter the class,
To understand the surroundings and the interior,
In harmony with them to serve the Plan.

445-8

@@

That leech will drink more blood.
She has gone quiet, has not fled to Russia.
The slow-acting mine will still do its work —
Those loyal till now will yet regret it.

The collaborator changed her shoes, became a patriot,
She is in the vanguard for independence.
At the first opportunity she recalled the imperial.
In the end — for now, caution.

The fifth column waits in the underground.
She is among us.
The aggressor looks after her,
For he has used her, and uses her still.

444-9

@@

Despite the clouds the sun is above them,
Light and warmth over the obstacles,
Below a human character is formed,
A people obedient to truth, or a turbulent people.

Some will understand that twilight is a blessing,
Others will drive the darkness clean away.
But best is to find the balance —
Both sun and clouds bring benefit.

To water with rain,
To harvest in drought.
Not to fear change.
If only one knows
Where to expose oneself,
And where to hide.

443-7

@@

I breathed in and breathed out — and where is life?
It is felt only at the joints.
As a result of efforts small or great
Memory is preserved, all the rest is trash.

I built
And it fell,
I traveled, I ate it up.
I had
What I wanted,
And it was gone.
At the end I said:

“I was born with nothing,
With nothing I depart.
Like the WORD, like smoke.
Scattered by it
In the archives of BEING I CAN dissolve.”

442-9

@@

(Dedicated to Bohdan Smolyak.
To the wisdom of his observations)

There is a pull to forget oneself, to leap into paradise.
Here is the powder — sniff and rejoice.
For a time I leave the body,
Take me, for I am no longer my own.

And indeed they hurry to make use of the soul,
Satan loves it differently than God:
He allows the mutilated one to return
Into a dishonored body, full of anxieties.

For the blessings of temptations one must pay:
I abandon my duties — I steal into the sky.
Driven by the spirit to serve the body,
As I tried — I will put it in a report.

441-8

@@

Unattainable star…
Shepherd and king
On summit and throne
Are wrapped in unease —
Primitive desires turn immodest,
Steps leap beyond the horizon.

The present does not satisfy.
We call artificial intelligence to our aid,
Listening to the Primordial
Provides a safety net,
So that wonders may be brought to the status of the ordinary.

Despite all the failings
As a symbol of eternity
The three tries
To become an eight.
It inflates,
The kopeck dreams of growing into a hryvnia.
A finger stretches toward the finger of God,
To merge with the Creator one like the Creator.

440-9

@@

Let’s forget about her.
How much longer? Three years of war!
Let us return to the peace we so yearn for,
For it is heading toward spring,
And not toward winter.

Why sink into depression
And breathe boredom onto others?
Let us sing
And dance,
Not notice the grief,
Pay no heed to pain and misfortune.

I sing, I dance,
I roam the bars,
I make merry, I joke,
For I am an optimist.
Yet from the weary I meet only condemnation.
For indifference — hatred, malice and spite.

439-6

@@

Emotions someday burn out —
Sharp needs gradually fade,
Leaps after happiness aren’t so high,
They grow used to sufferings,
They aren’t so deep anymore.

Old age, indifference, a time of philosophies,
Generalizations and sorting,
The feeling of oneself nailed on Golgotha
And simply curiosity, waiting for eternity.

They laughed at it, ignored it,
Fanatically believed in it,
Never truly imagined it,
Finally dared to find out.
They stepped into death’s beyond-the-rapids
But did not describe
For the living who hoped
And did not hope —
They did not break the barrier of mystery,
Did not overcome it.
They scattered.

438-8

@@

Trust,
But verify —
There are plenty of speculators around.
Care about the quality of projects,
So that nothing would steal from them.

Devotion to the cause —
The guarantee of success,
Oversight and accountability bring victory.
You’ll deprive competitors
Of a malicious smile,
Having DEFENDED freedom. And revenge is not the point.

Light for the maps, and it’s on the field,
Night-vision glasses will help.
To stop and curb war and evil —
Such is the purpose of good and light.

437-7

@@

I cannot live someone else’s life,
For several daughters, or at least for a son,
But the Father in heaven and mother Earth
Live through us unceasingly.

You cry, and someone rejoices,
At the neighbors’ there is grief, over the city a salute —
That’s the planet grieving, breathing, dreaming.
For us it’s here and there,
But for her only here.

Sower and reaper, benefactor and thief
Sacrifice or steal —
In care for me, in the agitation of peoples
Father and Mother live through us.

436-9

@@

That was Lina reading her own soul,
Pouring it out in verses —
She woke yours,
Called on me to sort myself out.

Who are you? What are you called to?
It wouldn’t hurt to walk her paths.
What pattern is still not woven,
Let your conscience advise you too.

Find yourself and you’ll help me.
Don’t be ashamed of the primitive.
Lina multiplied, and you will multiply,
I need your versified words as well.

435-8

@@

I am convinced that I know, there is no doubt,
And faith is as firm as ever.
But somehow the hand treacherously weakened —
Conscience disarmed me, made me feeble.

Whom to listen to? Her
Or the crowd
That managed to gather?
For my senseless ideas
The senseless are ready to die.

So I see two choices:
Self-liquidate
Or lead the country to ruin.
However I try,
However I strive —
One way or another I will perish.

434-8

@@

Constant comfort spoils.
Come, problem, refresh my gratitude.
Struggle with you completes well-being,
Perfect me and run to others.

You are called to strengthen
The weak and the fragile
Without a pacifier in the cradle
And with porridge in the bowl,
By the blackboard at school
And on the football pitch.
The exercise is written
And the book is read —
The hard has become EASY and accessible.

It’s a sin to complain about challenges-hardships,
About the true invisible teachers.
They add patience and courage,
They form a hero, as I wanted.

433-7

@@

Did Jesus appear to work miracles —
One levitation would suffice.
Pin Him to the cross —
Mortal or God — let Golgotha decide.

Once is not enough. Again and again
They kill the Lord.
They watch for the Messiah, that he would come
To suffer once more, as if on a schedule.

Recognition of the Sacrifice gives LIFE,
Doubt about eternity deadens.
Unbelief’s great force
Hurries to destroy below.
Therefore the called have invisible wings —
So the soul would fly to heaven for salvation.

432-9

@@

Anxieties, anxieties — rabid dogs
On chains.
Hope — a stick in the fist,
Last efforts — in the legs.

The sky — propped up with matchsticks,
The earth — shifting sand.
Betrayal — open baiting,
Across the river — a broken little bridge.

All the more in March
You won’t break the proud —
On that other bank
A little hill is marked.

431-9

@@

She worries whether I breathe with difficulty —
Cares, watches over my sleep.
Beside her, with a quiet anxiety,
I am ready to overcome a million
Obstacles.

Let her reproach that I ignore her,
That I love too little, forgot about her —
“Someone needs me” — I’ll feel once more,
I’ll note the important thing at dawn —
And happily fell asleep again.

No small strength,
Filled with thoughts.
And though they aren’t visible, be calm:
You haven’t enough of me, you are lonely and tired,
But know: only you — the purpose and the essence.

430-9

@@

Whoever speaks Russian
Becomes a “russkiy.”
The orc doesn’t occupy — he “liberates,”
Takes back “what’s his.”

Where the strangers are, where ours are —
It’s simple to tell:
The language of “rasha” —
And that is enough.

Switch over to it
And call down trouble.
Soon you’ll hear from the trench:
“Asvabazhdat’ idu!”

429-7

@@

What I didn’t expect has happened,
Nobody could even invent it.
I counted the chickens in autumn,
The dearest thing I lost, I managed to caress.

The reward for dreams will not pass by,
Romance is a serious business:
Wherever you weren’t going, it will lead you there,
What you never even dreamed of — you will TAKE.

They sense the end, they drop their hands,
The skyline becomes a wall —
For the despairing — a time of parting.
That’s only the beginning for you and me.

428-8

@@

Cold sweat in a terrible dream —
A vaccine against reality,
So that in a happy awakening
You’d rejoice at that ordinary life
Which already irritated,
And now in its banality
Has become attractive.

In prison the destitute, exhausted one
Will be carried to his native land:
Not parted from love,
Not detained for slander,
Given drink and fed —
Isn’t that paradise?

Truth exists in the world.
If not in waking life,
Where they beat and the beaten walk,
Then in a dream I’ll find it.

427-8

@@

In love and in HATE there is an amplitude of their own,
Rage and goodwill work in their own ways.
Somehow the last scoundrel doesn’t irritate me —
With zest I accept the villainy he arranged.

Someone looks after,
Protects,
As they can,
And jealousy eats them up —
Doesn’t it look like a grievance?
I treat the wicked one,
Drive away my own,
Won’t forgive the beloved,
Embrace the unworthy.

In relationships the labyrinths are twisted.
So there would be fewer of the sorrowful,
Remember, you cheerful, and know, you saddened:
“Practice good —
You will overcome evil.”

426-9

@@

Grievances. Rodents of souls.
Not so much of others as of their own owners.
“Let them repent, but don’t you touch me!”
And who is the unhappiest among the quarrel’s participants?

I.
Because the complaints come from me.
I am dissatisfied.
Justice sleeps, they ignore me.
With such a burden, will I last till pension?
One hope: in heaven they write everything, know and hear.

They hear and know.
And they wait as well
Until I learn to forgive.
They endure till harvest.
For the One on the mountain, who forgave us,
Plans to save only those who forgive.

425-9

@@

Fate has seized you with tweezers — you won’t break free,
By the neck, by the sides, or by the knee.
You writhe, you twist, and at last you’ll stop,
Tired of screaming and clutching at the walls.

You rejoiced and sang in this cage of habit,
They force you toward freedom — live as you wish.
For a serf nothing is more bitter
Than breathing freedom — you beg for slavery.

Everyone faces the facts of new situations.
Hell around or paradise —
In kaleidoscopes of disharmonies and graces
“Bad” or “good” — choose for yourself,
Enjoy happiness or suffer.

424-9

@@

Forgive me and do not judge me harshly
For jealousy, a confident stride.
I stamp the chosen path with my step.
Do not doubt — I will not let you go.

You are no hostage, no captive.
If I imprison you,
I will agree to free you at the last,
But who will tear you from the heart?

I will rejoice at your decision,
I’ll do everything for your happiness,
I’ll turn words into action,
My patience will bear it all.

423-9

@@

(coauthored with a modest beginner)

You asked me to write something pleasant,
Well then, I’ll try…
Talking with you is so sweet
I count it fate’s reward.

I am no poet, no artist of the word,
For I compose only primitive texts.
Yet I hope that my speech
Is able to carry feeling through.

I want to say something, somehow
On the model of Shakespeare’s sonnets,
So that your pulse would quicken
Only from joyful and tender moments.

422-8

@@

To appear happier than you really are —
A subconscious need to lift the spirits,
A mood nobody would take away,
With control of your own thought and voice.

To reign, not fall as a victim —
Positive emotions will help,
Yield where you must, stand stubborn somewhere,
Don’t belittle your girlfriends, and please a boy.

Have you made the effort to show yourself
Clever, kind, and cheerful?
You won’t wait long —
They’ll call you queen of beauty.

421-9

@@

Reality plays
As a reflection in the windows,
I hear not sounds, but their echoes.
Blood no longer trickles from a fingertip,
It flows along rivers,
Holidays and dates get lost in weekdays.

From the cradle’s edge the horizon has dropped,
The boundless planet has become a little ball,
Time flies faster,
Yet as if it stopped —
The soul has grown: it hasn’t enough room.

Dulled eyes already look at the ground,
And the frail body betrays —
Soon the next doors will open
To my “always” from “never.”

420-9

@@

Gift horses have crooked teeth,
And ours are flawless, for we have none.
Lips don’t swell from complaining.
Everyone is guilty the war still goes on.

The tank isn’t the right kind,
The guns aren’t the right ones,
The planes aren’t the right ones,
Too weak to fight…
Let them take the slag heap —
I’m going abroad.

There’s no other way to drive the enemy out.
Rotten or crooked —
For the nation to survive,
We’ll have to defend our own.

419-7

@@

Under the blanket of night worlds
Suddenly I understood
That I am glad of the storm.
And not because it’s Halloween,
For my thoughts are not gloomy at ALL,
But I hurry to bow to God.

The soul strains to meet the wind —
At last it has begun to roar.
It rustled
Through the treetops —
It heard me and answered.

Circle,
Whirl, swift, hasty.
You are strong — I know
That you are like that.
Not of today, eternal —
Not young
And not old.
Lift me
I wait.
But don’t break me.
I break a lot myself.
Better help me strengthen.

418-8

@@

Meeting yet another problem,
I take offense at fate.
Stumbling on a scheme of the solution,
I take pride in myself.

As foes and enemies
The irritants appear —
I want to avoid them.
Without agreeing to be their accomplices
It’s impossible to grow.

The last challenge — death.
I SO want to live!
It follows, until I die,
I must befriend death.

417-8

@@

Vibrations, repetitions, waves,
They stroke, caress, lull.
But at times a tsunami in anger
Will destroy, topple, slash.

Not only on the seashore,
In the economy, in politics, in fates —
They’ll wash away, lick away what was built,
Leave tears and grief.

Rhythms soothe, people grow used to them,
It would seem that’s enough —
They protect.
But they also teach —
In earthquakes and in storms they bring experience.

416-9

@@

Half a word, even a thought
Is enough for kindred hearts.
Heartfelt relations grow
To the envy of enemies.

Not a day without kisses.
In embraces, with a touching of necks,
Even without extra gifts,
The stranger becomes kin.

On the bed side by side and at a distance in spirit
They long to merge with bellies and chests,
And at last in ecstatic motion
They continue the lineages with children.

415-8

@@

Once you’ve begun, you won’t stop —
The format will change.
You won’t shut yourself in
Without achievements and losses.

Opposites — in unity.
Acknowledge and believe.
From zero to boundlessness,
From a spark to the stars.

After an addition, another addition,
After completion — continuation too.
Deep in the germ sits the beginning,
And the space for growth has no bounds.

414-9

@@

Wounds will heal,
Hopes will be fulfilled —
In reverse perspective:
The later, the more.
With delay, higher quality.
Patience is not weakness.
They hurry toward worse,
And the prudent are often happy.

I know what is wanted,
And I’d like it already.
Success asks for itself,
Presses and drives.

Don’t hurry much, but don’t miss it either.
The hunter is the one who shoots true:
A fraction of a second — aimed, hit.
But he waits long for that moment.

413-8

@@

Whom to blame that I’m not like that?
School, parents, or the country?
Seemingly kind, then suddenly mean,
Yesterday wild, and today calm.

I can’t always explain the magnets of circumstances,
And from the side it’s even worse to see —
And here I run or I lie,
Pleasant to some, disgusting to others.

WHAT is the criterion, and who will judge —
The scaffold or the pedestal?
Who sent me will also wake me —
Through me He took, through me He gave.

412-7

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The little letters will smolder away, the sound will scatter,
And memory, like a little cloud, will vanish,
The work of hands will rot in time,
But the ego just won’t get used to change.

It clings to eternity, weaves a web,
Tries this way and tries that:
What if it stumbles on the first cause
And squeezes the Universe in a fist.

Property is jealous of the owner,
A person strives to surpass God.
Such is the classic from time immemorial —
The opposition of the heavenly and the earthly.

411-9

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You want everything at once —
To count the beginning as the end.
In the first minute of ecstasy —
Not with an excavator, but with a pencil.

Maybe then not even be born —
To count that you’ve lived an eternity?
To take pleasure in zero
Without SOWING and without harvest?

You freeze, you sweat, you’ve overeaten and you’re hungry,
You cross through war or it’s boring in paradise —
To stretch out in time — that is the Lord’s plan,
From nothing
To everything —
And constantly in battle.

410-9

@@

If I believe in mom, especially in the ninth month,
And they wait for my appearance outside,
Tension grows in every little bone,
It can’t be explained —
Feelings inexpressible.

And what to call consciousness,
When words are absent?
Alone with the unknown,
There isn’t even light.

Soon the water will flow out,
And the womb will open.
To reach eternal life,
The born fear dying,
And I — being born into their world.

409-9

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The CAR vanished in a strange city.
In church, in a holy place,
My people have all gone and there’s no one
To take me home.
I don’t even have a phone.

I’ll have to find a way out of this mess,
Ask strangers for shelter.
And around me — homeless hangers-on —
So I sleep under a bridge or in an alley.

I got lost,
They stripped me
And drove me clean away.
My last anxiety —
That they not steal my soul as well.

408-8

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Homework done for the children
Doesn’t solve problems,
But deepens them.
Hidden among the lazy
They don’t hasten the good,
But call down misfortune.

Beloved son
(And thoughts of Ukraine),
Seek strength in yourself,
So they don’t bite you,
Try yourself
To fight back the dogs traitorously
Set upon you.

In help don’t blame
Someone else’s delay.
Credit the victories
To your repentance from your own laziness.

407-7

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With dried banana slices,
Stacked in layers, like waffles,
Fried in butter,
Thin crusts
Prepared at high temperature,
Slightly stewed in the oven,

With a somewhat raw potato, among themselves
Bryndza with a bit of garlic and flour,
As if with salt, dusted,
Switched on for about ten minutes,
With the skin, moderately crispy

I didn’t want to share with anyone —
It ate so deliciously:
And toward morning it just had to appear in a dream.
I’d never tasted it, but I wanted it so much.

406-8

@@

In a world of wonders it grows ever harder to amaze,
Tsunamis of news and sensations approach.
Maybe simply acknowledge the Demiurge as better?
Let him LIFT us above the waves — and they won’t sweep us away.

But no, we are interested in the very center of the hurricane,
The planet’s core and the bounds of bounds.
The ocean’s depths aren’t enough for us
Nor the number of stars in telescopes either.

Clothe yourself in patience,
You are only God’s likeness.
To remain a creation —
Is your nature.
A droplet absorbs and reflects
Everything around —
The Result and the Cause
Will look after it.

405-9

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I invite you as a friend,
Though jealousy tears us both apart,
Between us extreme tension,
Each suffers deeply.

We emphasize artificial indifference,
We attract with charisma,
We diligently flatter outsiders
With iron endurance.

With the intent to snap the nerve
Of the most important in the world
I am the first ready now
To fly headlong to you.
(Truth)

404-9

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To meet with dignity the one born into the world
And to see them off with dignity —
The responsibility of each
And of society,
To carry the spark of life together,
Not to extinguish God’s act.

Your flash, brother,
And sister’s firework
In starry glories
The worlds see.

In vain you grieve
Over your own worthlessness.
Believe and you will feel
Certainty in eternity.

403-9

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I have because someone paid —
A martyr, a father, Christ.
If not for a mother, I would not even live.

Heat on the left, and frost on the right —
The range between extremes,
A slit of comfort.

Through generations we drag ourselves
Toward the Eternal port
Along a corridor blasted through
By stonemasons for us —
Among them the Savior
And Kobzar Taras.

402-8

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They recited
A poem on the marshrutka.
About a modern kobzar
They said:
“We won’t give the beggar even a penny.”
They shoved him out and drove him off.

“So he was advertising his collection.
He’s looking for glory.”
… Good that I didn’t read.
I lay low. No one will even learn of me.

If you want to ride farther —
Don’t stick out.
Be gray, like everyone —
Fit yourself to the crowd.
Or walk on foot…, or pay for a taxi.

401-7

@@

A person learns,
While alive.
Until it leaves them,
Their soul.

Spirit — the teacher,
The body — a vessel,
Bearer of the soul.
By souls we judge the body.

The soul will leave the body,
Will COME home,
Will meet the SPIRIT-Father,
And pass the exam.

400-9

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To neutralize betrayal with betrayal
Both he and she decided —
They tried to save love,
Sinking lower than the bottom.

For lovers — success, amusement,
The intoxicating wine of temptation,
And in the result — a divorced couple,
And the fortune they built brought to nothing.

He called them into a phantom reality,
BROUGHT it into both their minds,
So they would GO past the extreme,
Roses and poison — Phantom.

399-9

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A golden iceberg with a peak of faith —
In fact a mountain
That with precious stones
GREW down to the bottom.

Not a floating fragment,
But a protruding foundation.
A linguoseismologist
Would simply say: the Word.

Confidence and anxiety
Of abysses and mountains —
Your victory.
Hope and believe!

398-9

@@

Lottery of fates. A rocket flies toward the Dnipro.
A tree fell on a house,
Someone was lucky, and someone was unLUCKy —
Didn’t even make it to the start.

Run or wait motionless —
Your personal lot will not pass you by.
Over the ocean, at work or at home —
Something very pleasant or sad.

Minutes and hours take off in alarm,
Panic in Florida.
Milton* carries great ruins —
A reminder to us on the journey.
__

• A hurricane in 2024.

397-8

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A special status — a wife.
The neighbor has his, and I have mine.
They also say: a half,
With her we are a family together.

Between us it is not merely friendship,
But a domestic forge of patience,
A loving mutual service
To strengthen the family roots.

A miracle of nature,
Two particles — a WHOle.
Their union builds a staircase,
To carry the living into eternity.

396-9

@@

They say I lie, I slander honest people,
I’ve invented a pile of kompromat.
I recall and reproduce in memory —
Not what it SEEMED, but the presence of facts.

Even if you don’t trust intuition
And body language,
Change your positions,
Because the racket has an itch…

All right. Logic will go to work.
It will describe the untruth.
By the method of a venal historian,
A savior of hostages. And not ONLY.

395-8

@@

Knowledge enriches, if you believe it.
To doubt it — it brings harm.
If it is convincing, it will force you to act —
Wait for the reward.

What does true mean, and what false?
Conscience decides.
Not dollars, not hryvnias,
But service to the truth —
All must die
And would that they reach salvation.

I am not trying to prove
To opponents, nor to myself,
I strive not to touch what is another’s,
But to recognize my own.
To find my own paths.

394-8

@@

A fierce position. Radicalism.
Cemeteries filled with crosses.
Fascism or communism,
Trumpism or Putinism —
Corridors of fates prepared for peoples.

You complain the predecessors chose wrong —
They brought grief, suffering, and trouble?
You fence yourself off, you find intermediaries —
Let them vote, and I won’t go.

Non-participation is also radicalism.
From it, still more graves.
A considered choice and wise action
Will steer the gathered strength toward the good.

393-7

@@

Say what you think — and you are a prophet,
Light to your neighbor and clarity for yourself.
A step directed in the true direction,
The past, the future, and the present made clear.

They wait for praise even of the false,
The better the flatterer, the higher the pay.
They envy the toady — no wonder.
They confirm the offender and the adversary.

Truth is painful for the sinner,
Unpleasant to the ear and to the eye.
So at the hint of a mocker’s compassion
A stone flies at the prophet.

392-8

@@

At the interrogation he whimpered.
He thought he had survived,
Kept his soul,
But his conscience - he could not.

So what did I win,
Having refused freedom?
I gave up my brothers-in-arms,
Hastening the defeat.

“So die twice —
For them and for yourSELF…” —
As a verdict in the face
The sky pronounces.

391-8

@@

How do you listen?
For purity of speech?
Intonation?
The expressiveness of the word?
Someone’s lecture?

Hearing is a sack
From which to sort,
Which thing is nourishing,
And what to throw away.

The valuable — into the treasury,
Trash — onto the garden.
Knowledge — onto the shelf
Of advice for rewards.

390-8

@@

Let’s be friends.
See? I have a knife.
We’ll establish control in the district,
Commit a little robbery,
So that first our acquaintances grow afraid of us.

I’ll take the most obedient into the gang,
Those who resist — terror:
I’ll take everything, let them eat slop,
Let the eagle and the tricolor be glorified.

I’ll find a way to handle civilizations,
I’ll destroy many Atlantises,
I’ll walk through history majestically,
Like a nit among nits.

389-9

@@

There is nothing, only energy —
An illusion of gas, liquid, and solid.
We call magnetic forces “matter,”
With the releasing of the light,
The attracting of the heavy.

Not only with hands
And feet,
Tongue and teeth
Do we draw near
Or draw away.
With deeds, with words
And thoughts
We HATE or we love.

The Creator spoke — and it came to be.
From the spiritual the Word was incarnate.
From the explosion it scattered,
In fragments it densified.

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@@

Labels and wrappers —
An explanation of the name.
The thing is known at once,
Its signs recognized:
Bitter or sweet,
Hay in a sack, or straw?

What is named — is numbered among knowledge,
It lies in the archive, written down.
The beloved are sung in songs.
And how to understand without a name?

“Love,” “suffering,”
“Skirts,” “spreaders,”
“Marichka,” “desire” —
Word-wrappers.

387-7

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They shake it empty, to scoop again.
There is a force that takes away, and there is —
One that gives.
From certain circumstances you must flee,
Leave what is another’s,
Having seized what is yours.

The world’s bipolarity will press into cellars,
Lie down as a crown,
Give a gift and steal.
Stroke and strike, fall and HANG,
You accept — it loads you,
You let go — it takes.

The filled becomes empty,
They wash the dirty of its uncleanness,
Polish it to make it able
To bear again —
To record heights.

386-8

@@

A short war —
Short sufferings too.
A small fault
And small hopes.

Yet a protracted
Shedding of blood
Makes one yearn
By the tension of will.

One must not
Past the edge
Overbend.
Prevail!
So that at the start
You stop the evil.

385-7

@@

Aliens
Watch over humanity,
For outside of time
They belong to being.

Imagination receives them,
Consciousness paints them.
This is no affair of mortals —
Space itself forms them.

From the beginning they are among us —
They fly in from their planets,
From virtual nets,
Nets in layers.
From stories and films, books and newspapers,
With ghostly dreams
And other lives
They compose a synchronous bouquet of realities.

384-2

@@

People crossed them out,
God received them.
They hewed a cross for the grave
To stand in memory.

They scratched in the name,
Born — died.
They had a bite and a drink,
And now what?

The dead have parted, drawn a border
By a bottomless crater,
They have hidden until their times
Behind a screen of secrets.

383-8

@@

Trouble took them, grief is sated.
Someone pitied and at once forgot.
Greedily the sea of troubles seizes —
Lures you away, so you might feel consolation.

Next morning you woke — you are breathing.
Someone’s path is finished, and you still have to go.
On a clean sheet you draw-and-write.
Before the waves erase it, you reach the goal.

Meaning and purpose
Push from within,
You don’t know the plan from above.
By magnetic forces you remain led —
Want to or not, run and crawl
In the hope that with the lost
A meeting awaits,

382-9

@@

Life and death in the stadium
And for the stands, where the spectators —
Two-sided confrontations
Concerning every soul.

Wherever you are — a contest is on,
Two boxers — good and evil.
In the ring: Hatred-Love.
Alone and in the mass — who takes whom.

Yet for a bright show it is fitting
To award medals to both,
For without problems a student will not learn
And will not receive a diploma.

381-9

@@

1. Grew — withered—vanished.
2. Grew — plucked — ate…
3. Grew — tore — ate — sold….

4. Sowed — raised — ate — fed.

5. Born— grew old — died.
6. Born — learned — lived.
7. Born — studied — lived — taught.

8. Begat — raised — lived — multiplied.

9. Appeared — was — vanished.
10. Arose — became aware — lived.
11. Appeared — grew aware — lived — put in order.
12. Created — perfected — lived — civilized.

380-7

@@

A chamomile and a butterfly are meant to be friends —
Nature is in harmony.
And suddenly — liquid soap —
Bubbles playfully
Inflate the air.

Colors in iridescence
Will scatter all around.
For less than minutes
They will live above the field.

Soap, chamomile, and butterfly
Are happy to serve even briefly
For merry moments
In a short wonder.

379-8

@@

Judas informs on the teacher to the scribe —
How do you like such a picture?
A saint helps the robber,
A father betrays his son.

As if against the stronger
One need not resist.
To indulge the sinful one
Does the Creator require of you?

You will meekly commit violence
Upon those close to you and your own people —
And you will strictly judge yourself,
If not today, then in time.

378-9

@@

If only to understand oneself.
If only to learn to hear one’s inner voice.
Not the one that destroys
Mine and another’s,
But the one that heads
From a speck into the cosmos.

If only to peck through, to scratch through,
To find a weak spot in the eggshell,
From zero
To make it into eternity
And come out onto a space without bounds, without end.

One cannot do without intuition.
The whisper of the innards and the call from outside,
Their silent Words
Will be judged, someday, at scale.

377-7

@@

“I will teach through urine,” —
It came into the mind wildly…
I see it now and keep silent —
On the break of consciousness and sleep
I hurry to catch sparks of truths,
So as not to forget, I jot them quickly.

I do not put off until morning
The counsel of the queen of night,
I add to the archive bank
The hints and prophetic slogans.

As just now, awakened to the toilet,
I remembered and wrote down
According to the plot —
So I would remember the source of knowledge
And, given the chance, bear witness.

376-9

@@

Not in empty words do they give themselves away,
But in the literal sense,
When the force goes outward,
Leaving the body neutral.

Breathless, entirely motionless,
Needed by no one,
Forgotten or very well known.
But the energy steps into another home.

Into the air, the water, the specks of dust around.
In a house far more spacious
The Word will continue to live,
In a more perfect, wider form.

375-7

@@

Truths are many,
The Truth is one.
What a feast this is —
To touch the bottom,

To climb Everest,
To rise to the orbits,
And to crawl, in the end,
To swim through, to fly through.

But again among the truths,
Having found the Truth,
Send it too among the truths —
The doubtful, the uncomprehended.

374-9

@@

A Ray of Hope

Long it has lain, needed by no one,
All avoid the neglected thing,
Disgusting to itself in a foreign world —
Light surrounds it, and inside is night.

Only a little ray of hope of lasting till tomorrow
From day to day warms, adds meaning.
“They will still call me,” the mantra sustains,
“They will yet duly value my service.”

For every good a buyer will be found,
Wood not fully pressed — anthracite.
Even if a million renounce you,
For someone you are in short supply.

373-9

@@

They did not liberate, they occupied.
Having named the territory their own.
They destroyed the population and deported them —
Took possession of the land.

It remains to erase the memory.
As if it had always been theirs.

So that historical experts fall silent,
In the hurried imperial insolence
They mercilessly destroy culture —
So the enslaved do not remember again
Their age-old nature.
And most of all, so they forget the language.

372-9

@@

The master gave to me, yet I boast not of the master —
Admire me, how cool I am.
And what if tomorrow, by the owner’s plan,
He hands it to another, because I am not the one?

I am not the reliable coachman he had hoped —
On the golden carriage, in top hat and tails
I forgot the grandee, was proud of myself,
Imagined myself in glory, a hired hand at work.

That is why I value the post,
The phaeton and the horses,
For they are entrusted by power —
I exalt it and am obedient to it!

371-9

@@

Indecision summons ailments —
You might as well list yourself among the weak.
Inaction is worth looking at otherwise —
Nature reminds us of fists.

Comfort relaxes,
Fight in order to live.
A cold and a runny nose mobilize,
Awaken the will to create powerfully.
At times they do not spare us at all.

Potential should not have gone stale,
The search for reserves and conscience
Do not cease to move us,
To bring evil or benefit.

370-9

@@

The end is nearer than I think of it.
Open your eyes, Michael, understand:
Will you boast of debts, or of a sum of profits?
How to tell: another’s treasure or yours?

Look around and you will see how often they confuse —
They take away, appropriate the stolen.
Pass it off as their own and do not atone,
Reckon even God will not recall it to them.

Better to give it away
Than to count it as yours.
Michael, be vigilant,
Lest they pass it into heaven
And name you
Guilty.

369-9

@@

The language of flowers will tell of much.
Not in vain is a bouquet chosen.
Chance will pick and bind,
For the artist and the poet to read.

The romantic and the dreamer,
Sorrowful or in love,
Passing by, they stop,
Having forgotten their startled thoughts,
They gaze intently into the petals.

Here is a parallel of your essence,
Pay, and take it in your handful,
Give feeling in its fullness,
Speak without words with grass and bloom.

368-9

@@

He took what was another’s — grew rich,
Seized the earthly under his care.
Turned property into money,
Tore at it as he knew how,
Until the age was done.

He gained glory, became a politician —
Reigned
Over peoples,
But did not consider
That he was robbing himself,
Even headed for heaven
After rewards.

He stole from everyone,
And most of all from himself.
But he could not steal
Neither God nor heaven.

367-8

@@

Lined-up formations look impressive,
But is their inner strength truly such?
Comfortable in paradise, and hell ahead,
Even the support of friends has weakened, crumbled.

Shall we surrender? Shall we retreat?
Shall we take the flags down from the bridges?
… Other than with blood, we will not buy freedom.
Necessarily our own. And we know this.

We need nothing that is another’s,
Ours we must stand for.
With the support of heaven
We will have to kill the enemy,
As

366-9

@@

Heated discussions
Are meant to develop,
Those bitten in arguments
Have grown used to biting.

Cutting off, they speak.
They talk in order to stop.
They bind the listeners
With the intent to lecture.

If only not to rush to the word
With sound and with letter —
The best conversation
Is conscience with thought.