As though good Doctor Botkin in his wisdom

had turned his mind to me well in advance,

giving his knife, in time, to Soldatenkov,

I opened life’s door again and stumbled out.

My brain sped off into receding twilight—

an ark sealed snug and tightly, hooped and braced,

it was restored by Soldatenkov’s genius

into its proper, from the other, place.

He’s still the same: no time for shows of honor,

for bowing and for scraping, even praise—

in any case, concern for us poor sufferers

is quite enough to keep a soul sustained.

But can you tell? I was in mines of nothing—

for seven days the doctors sank me deep:

there’s no one there. Bulat, I didn’t see you,

or maybe was forced to silence by decree.

Placid machines performed a clerkly function—

the pulses leapt and twittered on the screen

transcribing the twin hillocks, the two humplets

of my rearing, bucking, dromedary brain.

This crown of flesh, this mystery of juncture,

lives close beside, but sealed off from my life:

like sharing a vestibule, perhaps, with some shy scholar,

who greets you as you pass, but with dropped eyes.

So how to read its thrust inside my temples?

A survey? an attempt to make its peace?

Grounding in inner space is quite unwelcome:

only the higher places bring release.

We’re not well matched. Its job, I think, is torture:

teaching one’s skull to list among the waves

of thought. That’s right. The outer coasts of knowledge

are banned to knowledge—why, we cannot say.

Translated by Catriona Kelly