The Field of Babylon 
     Three Lakes  
     The Inertia of the Past  
     A Bad Memory

The Poet, founding member and General Director of the Russian PEN Club Alexander Tkachenko was born in Crimea in 1945. 
1963-1970 - professional soccer player in famous teams Lokomotive (Moscow), Zenit (St. Peterbourg), Tavria (Simpheropol). 

1972 - first book of poetry; 
By 1977 published 7 poerty books and joined Union of Writers; 
1988-1991 - Head of the Literature and Art Section of Rabotnitsa magazine; 
1991-1992 - Head of poetry section in youth magazine Yunost; 
1992-1994 - Editor-in-chief of Novaya Yunost; 

General Secretary of the Russian PEN Club since 1994; 

Member of the Executive Council of the International Parliament in Strassburg

The Field of Babylon cities cities  
Pompeiis the ashes of past emotions burg them 
night 
a volcanic eruption 
dreams crumble 
transients wander 
over the abyss of the Seine 
birds with ravenous beaks 
flock together 
passion suffocates men and women 
they fall asleep embracing 
covered with the ashes 
of past emotions 
gypsum and clay 
.............. marble and diorite 
absorb everything inessential 
to a future Rodin 
Pompeii's fiery mane 
buries millions of thoughts 
beneath the banality of 
St. John's revelation 
............... all with the hairstyle of a hippie 
Silence

SPIRALlNG WALLS OF ALIENATlON THAT PIERCE THE SKY 
THREATENING TO CRUNBLE AND BURY THE WORLD AT ANY MOMENT 
Every day a new Christ is crucified 
with the thumbtacks of a bureaucrat 
butterflies pinned in laboratories  
dry up before the eyes 
of cold scientists 
fish swim up to aquariums at universities  
asking to have the water of the oceans changed 
Homer looks with horror at his hexameters 
in the Procrustean beds of printers and tries to carry them 
back to Ionia in order to curl them up in the long waves 
of Time and History 
the "Challenger" and the "Nakhimov" sink into oceanic rifts 
into ruptured magnetic fields 
into chasms of tension 
THE TENSlON GROWS THE TENSION GROWS 
the human organism begins to falter 
people sink into the depths of the earth 
without recognizing the essence of the tragedy 
why 
does human skin stretch and ooze drops of blood 
instead of sweat 
computers take bribes 
for they are created in man's own image 
but soon they will call a summit 
to wrestle with the question of these bribes 
and to bring up the problem of creating man 
or rather of recreating him 
SPIRALING WALLS OF ALIENATION THAT PIERCE THE SKY 
THREATENING TO CRUMBLE AND BURY THE WORLD AT ANY MOMENT

. . . . . . . . . 

and when all the hungry of the world 
trace the paths of satellites with their eyes 
the stars stand still 
lighting up the great plowed field of the Earth 
sowing it with grains of spirit 
the stars stand still 
Kepler's grains of sand 
in the clockwork of the Universe 
the stars stand still because everything moves 
the hungry of the world have plowed the great field 
for the satiated 
because the satiated always stand still 
and everything revolves around them 
they have no need to lift their eyes to the sky 
no need to sow doubts 
or to worry about their nerves 
on the tips of which there could arise 
maybe even just the dimmest realization of inequality 
and then they'd have to rip kindness out of their hearts 
and be divided

but single cell organisms divide 
solely to multiply 
they have seeped into all the world's pores and flourished 
digging up the field 
with a type of charity 
specially tailored to fit multiplying mankind 
but the black soil stands tilled 
by plows wet with cut worms, 
and the rotted roots of once green 
governments 
the black soil stands opened to the core 
steaming with the breath of new life 
which struggles up from the depths 
in spite of all 
the black rupturings of the female womb 
giving birth 
to little men 
who come bounding out onto endless paths 
in spite of the tension of space and time 
running past the red glyphs of ancient urns to reach the finish line 
on asphalt roads 
negotiating their wag among heavy trucks 
children of Pompeii children of ashes 
children of isthmian currents 
children of the still unshattered core 
children of a sky 
that still hasn't come to resemble a Rubik's cube 
they grow up in a flash 
and they butt their heads 
against 

SPIRALING WALLS OF ALIENATION THAT PIERCE THE SKY 
BUT THEY BREAK THROUGH 

TO MEET THE SUN

In the forest like a limp windless weathervane 
(just follow the woodland path away from the field) 
there lay three lakes... 
A woman gazed into them and sighed, 
and like three panels 
folded into herself were reflected the shorelines and lake bottoms 
Like a three-leaved mirror, she was split 
into three lives. And men 
in the apartment four floors up 
divided her wrinkled face three ways. 
0 indivisible self - 
but each man took what was his. 
One took mostly her clothes, 
another mostly her body, 
and the third extracted her soul, 
something she had never dared reveal. 
She had lost control of everything now 
and each man took what was his. 
(Roots underground grew toward one another 
and rivers strained toward the same sea, 
and if disasters ranged about in a circle 
they ended up in a single sorrow.) 
Three destinies now floated over a forest, 
three women trudged along toward the town 
and each like the wind tried to grab 
a leaf that flew above her head.

(Translated by William Jay Smith and Vera Dunham)

Bullets continue their flying 
Coming out from wartime 
They join somehow with the motion of water 
The motion of the earth as it evolves 
And no one gets killed by them. 

Because they go just about as fast 
As the clouds go, as love goes. 
The bullet takes up the mood 
Of the still lakes as they move. 
But if something around the bullet slows down, then 
the bullets begin rising out of the earth like 
angle worms 
During a rainstorm. 
 

And it starts: 
Green apples fall from the boughs 
Trains arrive out of schedule 
The ocean tosses up unburied bodies of men. 

It happens that way 
And we don't have the right to move more slowly 
Than we moved yesterday 
Or even this morning. 

If we slow down 
The past will catch up. 
And kill us  
And lay our bodies out.

Translated by Robert Bly

A woman you are. 1 can't recall of what summer - 
what events then occurred, what insults, and such... 
Just a flat with no key, a flight with no ticket, 
and a parting embrace with arms that don't touch. 

A victim you are, but one of what age, 
of what complications that have faded by now? 
The branches move freely there with their foliage, 
but have they no trunk? Did the trunk die somehow? 

Golden you are. . . but of what buried forest, 
autumnal in spring or spring-like in fall? 
The summer's remains took revenge there with color 
when you thought that that summer was the last one of all. 

I cannot remember what it was that you wore, 
can't remember the corn that so clearly I earned. 
Just a flat with no key, a flight with no ticket 
and the empty place to which I returned. 

translated by William Jay Smith and Vera Dunham