Cats by Alexei Parshchikov

From Blue Vitriol

by Alexei Parshchikov

CATS

At the factory, where they make antibiotics,
the cats roam about.

One - covered with shells, is like driftwood
somewhat knotty.
Another - with its outstretched tongue
resembling a fire iron.
And the third - so gigantic, like some great calm
over the Persian Gulf.

They crisscross about the pharmaceutical factory
licking the various pills,
between the plague and cholera,
the flu and smallpox,
slithering through so many different deaths.

They shoo around everything, these czars of indulgence,
and only while dying, they obtain their skeletons.

Here's the black cat writhing, scratching the ground
hallucinating, he sees himself buried there.

And the white one, burnt out on drugs
fleecy, like feather grass,
his small heart in plumes.

The cats are guessing that they're beholding paradise
becoming the very supporting points on which it exists,
as if they were stretching a canvas,
getting ready to shake down
the ripe apples.

Now that they've apprehended paradise,

they'll go off at the same pace
like mechanics alongside the wing of an airplane
embraced by the forces of disappearance.

And they'll let paradise fall from their paws,
and the dictators will meet them in passing,
and crush the cats under their boots.

Nero's battling with the cat.
Attila's battling with the cat.
Ivan the Fourth's battling with the cat.
Lavrentii's battling with the cat.
Korea's battling with the cat.
Kotov's battling with the cat.
The cat's battling with the cat.

And the cat's karate is nothing
compared with the statues of dictators!

Note: Lavrentii Beria was one of Stalin's chief executioners.

Translated from the Russian by John High