Matvei Gungadín

Transactions

Because of you I no longer want to

Hole myself up in soulless hotel rooms

With hand towels and hand lotion

Spouting new archipelagos

In order to maintain an effective remedy

You must mutate like the plate faults that ail me. 

Be Greece to my Turkey; Turkey when I am Greece,

Know when I am Jason and sing to be fleeced;

When I try to touch with fingers I never can

You detect me coming and close up like clams

Fear my harpoon gun - it is as drainless as Lake Van 

Knidos

When the Persians came, 

I tried to make an island of my peninsula – 

but topography disagreed

When you came, I tried with one hand, two –

to make an isthmus of my island – 

but physiology paid no heed;

I ran out of wood one night

before my mole could become bridge

But lightning striking littoral laurel leaves 

Adrift, made tendril turn to snake, 

that could swim, sing, fly – 

Report your whereabouts –

and return home for the rosy-fingered spawn.

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