Mind Over Matter. 72 assorted poems in English by a Russian. Leonid Sboyko

      Of all time measure units

      Day is one true:

      The rest are merely conventions

      To human counting due.

      The morning, noon, then evening, night,

      Then dawn again – that’s always right:

      There’s never other cycle —

      A change unchangeable like a …

      Like what, indeed? Like what?

      Future’s horizon

      We never reach

      Stuck in the Present

      And our memories

      Future’s the cradle

      Of our dreams

      We’re freer there

      Than we can be

      By Past, in the Present, for Future we live:

      What due to, what in and what for;

      Past is the one which

      We so quickly enrich,

      Present’s a fiction,

      Future, we miss and put off

      Believe the Time Inside about its speed

      For it’s the other one that cheats:

      The one we check by glancing at a clock,

      The one whose pace we take in as a shock.

      The river flows,

      The sunset glows,

      The wind, forsaken, freely blows,

      My timer quicker and quicker slows

      And soon comes to a stand;

      The heat still beats,

      My pulse still reads,

      I peacefully wonder where it leads

      A rainy, rainy, rainy day

      A good old chess game left to play…

      I wish the day would stay

      And I would play

      Lifetimes away…

      Time wears not

      But it makes one wear

      Some find it cruel

      Some find it fair

      Civilization of sleepwalkers,

      Civilization of small talkers —

      That’s who we are,

      That’s today’s broad karma!

      That’s where we would end up webbed

      But few first years having kept

      At curb, in sweet deceit,

      In which I would have rather leapt

      Once and for all, again,

      To never wake up to the realm

      Of those who sleep when walking,

      Of those nothingtalking.

      Everybody knows what it’s all about,

      Nobody knows what for:

      Hi-smi-ling and signing

      And politely dining

      Then feeling incredibly bored…

      Nobody relates

      To my diving today

      In a cold mountain lake.

      Too many people close about

      Make a crowd.

      Moscow’s endowed with it, no doubt:

      We abound,

      We are all around

      Whom have we found?

      No one to be the One,

      No sooth to be the Truth,

      No win worth having won,

      No fighting nail and tooth.

      Too many people, not too many friends —

      A common big places’ notable trend,

      To lonely homes the way to wend,

      Away from small places, from which we were rent.

      Too many things that are currently on —

      The shows – why not – might indeed go on

      So all our talks are of shows we’ve seen

      And just city places, to which we have been.

      You write to your province friends of this waterspout

      But there’s nothing you feel worth writing about —

      To them, that all is city talk,

      Which we ill-strenuously balk.

      Too many people close about

      No place to stay out

      You are alone

      But not quite your own

      You are quite single

      But you have to mingle…

      Time gets by —

      Hard to ask it why —

      And you are just a slice

      Of one big apple-pie.

      Too many people for so few places

      Homes to mad and futile races

      For better and better stuff and gadgets to have

      But everyone needs somebody to love.

      Too many people close about

      Make a crowd

      But no-one’s as close to thee

      As you would want him to be.

      We abound,

      We are all around —

      Whom have we found?

      Lots of people, little space:

      One hot dirty endless race,

      One for pleasure, leisure, place,

      One immeasurable craze.

      Lots of people, little space:

      All big cities are a race…

      One must really be small

      To fit in it with us all

      ComPunication

      We are some of the first of those

      Who have had their first nice dose

      Of computerized communication:

      A dose of comPunication.

              Why meet

              If you can have your seat