India 1 - Juri Andruchowytsch

India begins with dreams about setting out

on an eastbound journey. These dreams have plots, they are

like a film through which one wanders like a gallant hero.

You simply hear the trumpet or the gong, or the ringing of water,

or a voice that whispers, "Get up and go!"--but you

are not sure if you heard it with your ear or your heart.

India is not exactly a peninsula. It is a continent

that borders Nothingness. Neither atlas nor dictionary

takes into account the world's being surrounded by the Nile,

or the stars in the sky being but a performance

in God's theater. And it looks like the time hasn't come yet:

it's easier for us to consider the plane a sphere. A body.

We consider a sphere that which rests like a flatbread.

But you, having heard the harsh commanding "march!"

procure a sword and set out eastward--to die.

You put together a squadron of merry and mean cutthroats;

along the way they sing somewhat like

the angels in their nighttime cherubic concerts.

The plane's made of deserts and kingdoms, mountain ranges and cities

above which is but the thick atmosphere that's

seven heavens high--and what discord or manna can come out of them!

Only having lost the horses, the friends, all the carts with supplies,

through persistence like that of the twisted and battered grapevine

you'll make your way to the place where one hears the word "rahmanna."

---

Juri Andruchowytsch (born 1960) Ukraine

Translated by Vitaly Chernetsky

Source: LyrikLine