Boom! Baboom! The sound hit his back. Turning as he ran, Benedikt saw the fireball rise up and charge down the streets, exploding extra barrels of guzzelean, swallowing up whole izbas in one gulp, throwing itself like a red yoke from house to house, licking the palings and fences, heading in one direction as though following a thread-right to the Red Terem.

Then he fell in a grassy ditch, covered his face with his cap, and didn't look again.

Toward evening Benedikt lifted the cap off his face and looked around with dull, empty eyes. The plain still smoldered with gray pockets of smoke, but the fire had had its fill and settled down. In some places the charred skeleton of an izba stuck out, in others an entire street was untouched amid grass yellowed and curled by the heat. But there, in the distance, where the red towers had always risen with their carved fripperies and decorative frilleries, nothing could be seen and nothing rose at all.

My steppe is burned, the grass is felled No fire, no star, no road, I'm not to blame for kissing, Forgive me, my betrothed…

What was once the pushkin stood above the yellow, burned field like a black boil. Beriawood is a sturdy wood, we know our carpentry. Benedikt made his way to the poet's remains and looked up at what had been his features, now blistered and blurred by the heat. His sideburns and face had baked into a single blob. On the swell of his elbow lay a pile of white ash with flickering coals, but all six fingers had fallen off.

At the base of the pedestal a scorched corpse was doubled up. Benedikt looked and poked it with his foot-Terenty Yep, those were his teeth.

It smelled of burning. Life was over. Behind the idol's back someone spat and moved.

"Give me a hand, I'll get down. It's too high for me," croaked Nikita Ivanich.

As black as the pushkin, just the whites of his eyes red from the fumes, hairless and beardless, creaking and still smoking, Nikita Ivanich leaned on Benedikt's numb hand and climbed down from the crumbling, seared braces. He spat out some coals.

"Life is over, Nikita Ivanich," said Benedikt in a voice that was not his own. The words resounded in his head, as though spoken in an empty stone bucket or a well.

"It's over… so we'll start another one," the old man grumbled in reply. "You could at least tear me off a piece of your shirt, to cover my privates. Can't you see? I'm naked. What are young people coming to nowadays?"

Lev Lvovich of the Dissidents wandered among the ashes, clutching his shaggy hair with both hands, looking for something in the grass that was no longer there.

"Lyovushka! Come over here. So, where were we?" asked Nikita Ivanich, wrapping his loins in a piece of Benedikt's vest. "I could use a clothespin. What lazy people… Can't even invent clothespins."

"A safety pin!" said Lev Lvovich reproachfully, running over. "I always said: a safety pin! A marvelous, civilized invention."

"There's no civilization, Golubchik. We have to do it ourselves, with our wood one."

"Now that's nationalist claptrap," cried Lev Lvovich. "That stinks of the newspaper Tomorrow. Vulgar spiritualism! It's not the first time I've noticed! It stinks!"

"Listen, Lyovushka, knock it off, will you? Let's retreat, let's soar above the sands. Shall we?"

"Let's!"

The Oldeners bent their knees, held hands, and began to rise in the air. They were both laughing-Lev Lvovich shrieked a bit, as though he were afraid to swim in cold water, and Nikita Ivanich laughed in a deep voice: ho-ho-ho. Nikita Ivanich brushed the soot from his feet-foot against foot, quickly-and dropped a little of it on Benedikt's face.

"Hey, What're you up to?" cried Benedikt, rubbing his eye.

"Nothing!" they answered from above.

"Why didn't you burn up?"

"Didn't feel like it! Just didn't feeeeel like it!"

"So you mean you didn't die? Huh? Or did you?"

"Figure it out as best you can!"

O joyless, painless moment!

The spirit rises, beggarly and bright,

A stubborn wind blows hard, and hastens

The cooling ash that follows it in flight.

Moscow , Princeton, Oxford, Tyree, Athens, Panormo, Fyodor-Kuzmichsk, Moscow

1986-2000

POETRY QUOTED IN The Slynx

Translations by Jamey Gambrell. Most of the poems are untitled.

PAGE

16 Mountain summits: Mikhail Lermontov, translation from

Goethe Insomnia. Homer. Taut sails: Osip Mandelstam, "Insomnia"

17 Spikenard, cinnamon, and aloe: Alexander Pushkin O spring without end or borders!: Alexander Blok

25 Hiccup, Hiccup: based on Russian folk nonsense rhymes

27 On the black sky-words are inscribed: Marina Tsvetaeva

32 Life, you're but a mouse's scurry: Alexander Pushkin

33 The reed pipe sings upon the bridge: Alexander Blok

In the district where no feet have passed: Boris Pasternak

39 From the dawn a luxurious cold: Yakov Polonsky

63 Winter shows its anger still: Fyodor Tiutchev

76 The heart of a beauty!: Verdi, "La donna e mobile," from Rigoletto

86 Not because she shines so bright: Innokenty Annensky

87 The flame's ablaze, it doesn't smoke: Bulat Okudzhava

I want to be bold, I want to be a scoffer: Konstantin Balmont

88 No, I do not hold that stormy pleasure dear!: Alexander

Pushkin You lie in silence, heeding ne'er a sound: Alexander Pushkin

134 But the hand behind your back is stronger: Natalya Krandievskaya

189 O tender specter, happy chance: Natalya Krandievskaya

190 O city! O wind! O snowstorms and blizzards!: Alexander Blok

But is the world not all alike?: Natalya Krandievskaya

202 Bright thoughts ascend: Alexander Blok

206 From the threshold of the gate: Bulat Okudzhava

208 February! Grab the inks and cry!: Boris Pasternak

216 Oh, the moment, oh, the bitter fight: Alexei Khvostenko

223 Our eyes were glued to the tribune: anonymous Soviet poem, c. 1970s

231 Steppe and nothing else: Russian folk song

233 And where is that clearest of fires: Bulat Okudzhava

234 The lamplighter should have lit them, but sleeps: Bulat Okudzhava

241 Beneath a canopy of fetid thatch: Natalya Krandievskaya

242 In the stony cracks between the tiles: Nikolai Zabolotsky Life, you're but a mouse's scurry: Alexander Pushkin Neither fire nor darkened huts: Alexander Pushkin

245 O world, roll up into a single block: Nikolai Zabolotsky

246 Joy, thou beauteous godly lightning: Schiller, from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony

254 The trepidation of life, of all the centuries and races:

Maximilian Voloshin He who draws the darkest lot of chance: Alexander Blok What kind of East do you favor?: Vladimir Solovyov Is all quiet among our fair people?: Alexander Blok

255 Man suits all elements, every season: Alexander Pushkin

274 My steppe is burned, the grass is felled: Alexander Blok

275 O joyless, painless moment!: Natalya Krandievskaya