My Universities

I learned not only from those
                             who brightly beam out of golden frames,
but from everyone whose ID photo
                                didn't come out quite right.
More than from Tolstoy
                      I learned from blind beggars
who sang in train cars about Count Tolstoy.
From barracks
             I learned more than from Pasternak
                                               and my verse style was hot "barracko".
I took lessons on Yesenin
                         in snack bars from invalids of war
who tore their striped sailor shirts
                                    after spilling out their plain secrets.
Mayakovsky's stepped verse
                          didn't give me as much
as the dirty steps of staircases
                                with handrails polished by kids' pants.
I learned in Zima Junction
                          from my most untalkative Grannies
not to be afraid of cuts, scratches,
                                    and various other scrapes.
I learned from dead-end streets that smell of cats,
                                                   from crooked spattered lanes,
to be sharper than a knife,
                           more ordinary than a cigarette butt.
Empty lots were my shepherds.
                             Waiting lines my nursing mothers.
I learned from all the young toughs
                                   who gave me a whipping.
I learned
         from pale-faced harried hacks
with fatal content in their verse
                                 and empty content in their pockets.
I learned from all the oddballs in attics,
                                          from the dress cutter Alka
who kissed me
             in the dark of a communal kitchen.
I was put together out of the birthmarks of the Motherland
                                                          from scratches and scars,
cradles and cemeteries,
                       hovels and temples.
My first globe was a rag ball,
                              without foreign threads,
with brick crumbs sticking to it,
and when I forced my way to
                           the real globe,
I saw--it was also made of scraps
                                 and also subject to blows.
And I cursed the bloody soccer game,
                                    where they play with the planet without refs or rules,
and any tiny scrap of the planet,
                                 which I touched,
                                                 I celebrated!
I went round the planet
                       as if it were a gigantic Zima Station,
and I learned from the wrinkles of old women,
                                             now Vietnamese, now Peruvian.
I learned folk wisdom
                     taught by the worldwide poor and scum,
the Eskimo's smell for ice,
                           and the Italian's smiling non-despair.
I learned from Harlem
                     not to consider poverty poor,
like a Black
            whose face is only painted white.
And I understood that the majority bends
                                        its neck on behalf of others,
and in the wrinkles of those necks
                                  the minority hides as if in trenches.
I am branded with the brand of the majority.
                                            I want to be their food and shelter.
I am the name of all without names.
                                   I am a writer for all who don't write.
I am a writer
             created by readers,
and readers are created by me.
                              My debt has been paid.
Here I am
         your creator and your creation,
an anthology of you,
                    a second edition of your lives.
I stand more naked than Adam,
                             rejecting court tailors,
the embodiment of imperfections--
                                 yours and my own.
I stand on the ruins
                    of loves I destroyed.
The ashes of friendships and hopes
                                  coldly fly through my fingers.
Choking on muteness
                   and the last man to get in line,
I would die for any one of you,
                               because each of you is my homeland.
I am dying from love
                    and I howl with pain like a wolf.
If I despise you--
                  I despise myself even more.
I could fail without you.
                         Help me to be my real self,
not to stoop to pride,
                      not to fall into heaven.
I am a shopping bag stuffed
                           with all the world's shoppers.
I am everybody's photographer,
                              a paparazzo of the infamous.
I am your common portrait,
                          where so much remains to be painted.
Your faces are my Louvre,
                         my private Prado.
I am like a video player,
                         whose cassettes are loaded with you.
I am an attempt at diaries by others
                                    and an attempt at a worldwide newspaper.
You have written yourself
                         with my tooth-marked pen.
I don't want to teach you.
                          I want to learn from you.

Translated by Antonina W. Bouis, Albert C. Todd and Yevgeny Yevtushenko