Café Pushkin

Now we live as if in a Russian novel
written in verse, by Aleksandr Pushkin.
We are the ones changing the street signs
but we are needy
and sleep in the same bed under a mountain
of clothes while the frost creaks.
Now Moscow is
again Moscow
and we trudge on. Everything is a lie
just as in reality.

You fantasize abouth stealing the machine gun
from a sleeping soldier,
but the soldiers stay awake
all night with you.
And you dance all night in Café Pushkin,
while I stand in the cloakroom
smoking Russian cigarettes,
what else?
Now you are called Natalia
and talk like someone who's crazy
crazy crazy.

And Pushkin was actually murdered
by her lover.

Translated by P.K Brask & Patrick Friesen
© Niels Hav