Red Desert (წითელი უდაბნო)

The gift of wings – is it a blessing,
or a punishment
to become the butt of slaves?
Saint-Exupéry will tell me
and so will Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

At the drop of ice cubes into whisky
you reaffirm your belief
that, somewhere, the sky is much wider.
When the pilot announces, ‘turbulence’,
it’s time for poetry to present its petition.

In view of the evil rife in this world,
the poet is asked to write to a friend,
because a poet can gaze down from a height
and see on the map
the entire era displayed.

At the hotel triumphantly called Gloria,
with its name in ornamental lettering,
I opened the door onto the era
and met Iscariot’s agent
who, wherever he is, turns up on the right side.

I’d love to award him a decoration, but I don’t know
what title he goes under now.
He’s a well-known dealer in democracies,
selling the Demos
and buying the Kratos.

Thus, even the most celestial of objectives
becomes a cover-up for earthly desires.
Pay attention, my dear listener,
you know that I’m not one who welcomes
widely accepted provocations.

Trends and tendencies sneer at time,
thirsting for sheer novelty.
Look closer at Picasso’s Avignon,
or at Olympia by Manet.

If we persist in the old ways
a gloomier future awaits us,
and all the empty boxes at the theatre
will be thronged with the former rabble.

So it is, and has been from the beginning,
for light cannot exist without the dark.
The just man commits wrongs in his own country,
but the corrupt violates another’s land.

Foreign officials won’t welcome you
if you refuse to accept the harsh imperial croak
as though it were the top note of a soprano.
They hoist the sails of their pride
ever higher,
while flattery from the outskirts of the empire
is ever more pleasing to the ears
listening at the supreme leader’s door
ever since Antonioni’s Red Desert
laid waste the garden of Adam and Eve.

This world forces us onto a merry-go-round
while NATO’s door remains still closed.
A peddler of snake-oil convinces his party
with the pathos of his love for a Soviet Georgia.

As I wrote to my friend, I seek powerful words
to bring to the fore exquisite Kartli
and save the modern world, so
let’s go and find Tato [i],
or talk to the scholar Dodashvili [ii].

Although my bold quest may result in a personal crisis,
I long to do something heroic,
and I’ll confront danger joyfully
for the incomparable Kartli . . .
incomparable Kartli . . .
If heroes of books leap out of the pages
despite being Georgian cultural attachés,
I will do what I have to do humbly,
mindful of Aluda [iii]
and of Leko Tatashell [iv].
If the old days are trapped in the past,
what will the new time have to say?
Fashionable Europe turns her back on God
and lounges on the therapist’s couch.
Time is unalterable,
there’s no this time or that time . . .
but time beyond God is the most alarming.

The Maestro revives the French Tango
and the USA butters-up Europe.
A new Manet and
a new Picasso
will destroy the reign of this desolate era.
As for me, I prefer wine to antidepressants,
and shun the psychologist,
rather, holding tight to a friend.

And the gift of wings – is it a blessing, or a punishment
to become the butt of slaves?
The immortal pilot, Antoine, will give me the answer,
as indeed, will Jonathan Livingston Seagull himself.

Endnotes
[i] Tato is a great Georgian poet.
[ii] Dodashvili – Georgian Philosopher.
[iii] Aluda is a literary hero.
[iv] Leko Tatasheli is a literary hero.