1702: Beautiful Funeral | Monica Ferrell
"Beautiful Funeral"
Monica Ferrell
Tonight, you are thinking of heroin,
Of the boy who pulled you to his lips
In a blue room and whispered heroin
So close you could feel it on your face like a cloudburst.
He makes you think of furs and Russia,
Midnight sun and Petersburg canals, a sullen gun
Where one bullet’s lodged like something in the craw
Of a drowned boy fished from beneath docks.
His limbs were white with blue veins
Spidered beneath the light shell of his skin
Open to the littlest bark, the tiniest trireme,
His veins were vulnerable as a bruise-black mare
Just as the barn begins to spark. And once
In the night that held its candle closer to see
His needled flesh heaved beneath the sink
Of a city bathroom, aching to vomit up its ore…
You would have dusted off those peacock rings
Below his eyes with your sandpaper tongue,
Lapped his form in camphor-drenched gauze
Then washed him in waves of organ music.
You would have pressed down that black key
By his spine’s base to hear the deepest of tones
A body can moan. Ah, invalid.
We would have made a beautiful funeral.
И ты палкой чертишь палаты,/Где мы будем всегда вдвоем.
(And with a stick you are drawing mansions/Where we will always be together)
Monica Ferrell
Tonight, you are thinking of heroin,
Of the boy who pulled you to his lips
In a blue room and whispered heroin
So close you could feel it on your face like a cloudburst.
He makes you think of furs and Russia,
Midnight sun and Petersburg canals, a sullen gun
Where one bullet’s lodged like something in the craw
Of a drowned boy fished from beneath docks.
His limbs were white with blue veins
Spidered beneath the light shell of his skin
Open to the littlest bark, the tiniest trireme,
His veins were vulnerable as a bruise-black mare
Just as the barn begins to spark. And once
In the night that held its candle closer to see
His needled flesh heaved beneath the sink
Of a city bathroom, aching to vomit up its ore…
You would have dusted off those peacock rings
Below his eyes with your sandpaper tongue,
Lapped his form in camphor-drenched gauze
Then washed him in waves of organ music.
You would have pressed down that black key
By his spine’s base to hear the deepest of tones
A body can moan. Ah, invalid.
We would have made a beautiful funeral.
И ты палкой чертишь палаты,/Где мы будем всегда вдвоем.
(And with a stick you are drawing mansions/Where we will always be together)