• Poetry,  Translation

    “The Author Dedicates These Lines to His Beloved Self” by Vladimir Mayakovsky (translated by Val Vinokur)

    The Author Dedicates These Lines to His Beloved Self

    Heavy.
    Like six blows.
    “Caesar’s unto Caesar––God’s unto God.”
    But where is a guy
    like me
    supposed to go?
    Where is my lair prepared?

    If I were
    still little,
    like the Great Ocean,
    I’d get up on my wavy tiptoes,
    caress the moon with the tide.
    Where can I find a beloved,
    someone just like me?
    She wouldn’t fit into the tiny sky!

    O if only I were penniless!
    Like a billionaire!

  • Poetry

    “The Diagnosis” by James Tate

    ……………Lincoln was sixty years old when the
    doctor told him he only had forty more years
    to live. He didn’t tell his wife, with whom
    he confided everything, or any of his friends,
    because this new revelation made him feel all
    alone in a way he had never experienced before.
    He and Rachel had been inseparable for as long
    as he could remember and he thought that if she
    knew the prognosis she would begin to feel alone,
    too. But Rachel could see the change in him
    and within a couple of days she figured out
    what it meant.