I HAVE A CRISIS FOR YOU

you lit up a cigarette

but it wouldn’t burn

it was summer

and girls would light up from any passerby

but I didn’t light up for you anymore

“our love’s gone missing,” I explain to a friend

it vanished in one of the wars

we waged in our kitchen

“replace the word war with crisis,” he says

because crisis is something everyone has from time to time

do you remember the second world crisis?

respectively, the first one as well

the civil crisis—to each his own

I forgot about the cold crisis

it seems there were two of them

also the liberation crisis should be mentioned

it sounds so good—

the liberation crisis of 1648–1657

write it down in textbooks

a crisis that liberates

releases forever

my great-grandfather died in the second world crisis

possibly at the hand of my other great-grandfather

or his machine gun

or his battle tank

but it’s unclear

how they fought this crisis with each other

or whether it was the crisis itself that killed them, like a plague

for no one is to blame for a crisis

it is inexorable as death

and when our own domestic war

turns into a crisis

does it get better?

does it hurt less?

do birds return to us from the south

or maybe, do we go to meet them?

why is our language like that—

we lack words to describe our feelings

only crisis and love are left

as antonyms

but if love is so complicated

with these blazes and smoldering

like blood and pain

(and blood is not at all like one’s periods

but some new feeling of mine)

(and pain is yours)

if love is made up of two different feelings

then soon love will also be called crisis

I have a crisis for you, darling

let’s get married

we’ve got a crisis

we’d better split up

Translated by Svetlana Lavochkina