Trial

-1-

Trial - by misunderstanding,
Spines together - crevasse between.
Look to side - step into exile,
Hands like briars - limp at the seams.

Through seams of nerves, joints and sinews
Blood does not gush - it drips from pores,
And not a man - a man's likeness
And all in surplus - excess of nerves.

-2-

Heart ahead - through body the current flows,
Eyes away - in darkness to look,
Heat, and cold, and in ribs the arrows 
Spine on spine beat out a spark.

Hands are touching - just like dry branches,
It is time - to start the game must.
Where eyes play, where the body's rejected,
Where success and failure compare the cost. 

Like a sword's stroke - sharp eyes opening:
To make prisoner and take away.
Two lakes - light, two lakes of sorrows,
To freeze - like a boa at prey.

And smoothness, and depth, and silence -
Play of crystals liquefied
Sin original, warmth and light too...
Understanding nonverbal - through the eyes.

-3-

Trial by misunderstanding,
Spines - and if sometime
To turn around in fit of delirium
With landslide of feeling - eye to eye -

But to cease in the blind enlightenment,
Not to fall - only to sway,
And to continue, moment to moment,
And with lips to fall into lake.

By Lubov Sokolovsky
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat