Vsevolod Nekrasov: Two Poems

A POEM ABOUT CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES

For Alik Ginzburg

 

 

Had it up to here:

Chatted up to here.

 

Chatted up to here:

Had it up to here.

 

 

Chatted,

Had it,

 

Had it,

Chatted!

 

 

 

 

 

VERSES ON ANY WATER

 

Water

Water water water

Water water water water

Water water water water

Water water

Water

Flowed

 

 

 

Sergey Sergeyevich the teacher

Bought himself a magnifier

Bought himself a magnifier

Not because he was a teacher

But because he won the lottery

 

– – – –

 

 

Underfoot out the door

You feel

The leaves

 

There must be

A road here

 

That must be

Moscow there

 

Vacant

Darkness

 

Rainy

Silence

 

Distant barks

Halloing

 

One streetlamp

Another

 

from I Live I see, Vsevold Nekrasov, Ugly Duckling Press, 2013

Vsevolod Nekrasov (1934-2009) was a member of the “non-conformist” Lianozovo group, a founder of Moscow Conceptualism, and the foremost minimalist to come out of the Soviet literary underground. Before the fall of the Soviet Union, his work appeared only in samizdat and Western publications.

With an economy of lyrical means and a wry sense of humor, Nekrasov’s early poems rupture Russian poetic tradition and stultified Soviet language, while his later work tackles the excesses of the new Russian order.

I Live I See is a testament to Nekrasov’s lifelong conviction that art can not only withstand, but undermine oppression.