Sergei Stepansky's Narrative

I gamble my life!
It wasn't worth much!
I have lost it
hopelessly!
Erik Ejordson

I gamble my life, I barter my lifc,
I have lost it
anyway...

And I gamble or trade it for the most puerile mirage,
I give it in usufruct, or I give it away...

I gamble it against one or against everybody,
I gamble it against zero or infinity,
I gamble it in a bedroom, in an agora, or in a
/gambling den,
in a crossroads, in a barricade, in a mutiny ;
I definitely gamble it, from beginning to end,
breathwise and deepwise
-on the periphery, in the middle,
and in the underdepth...

I gamble my life, I barter my life,
I have lost it
hopelessly.

And I gamble it, or trade it for the most puerile mirage,
I give it in usufruct, or I give it away...:
or I trade it for a smile and four kisses:
all is the same to me:
whatever is eminent and base, trivial, perfect or bad...

All is the same to me:
there is room enough for everything in the minute
/horrid abyss
where my brain is knotted like a snake.

I trade my life for old lamps
or for the dice used to gamble the seamless tunic:
-for the most anodyne, the most obvious, the most futile:
for the pendants the simian mulatto girl
hangs on her ears,
as do the Nubian terra-cotta,
the pale brunette, the yellowish oriental woman, or the
/hyperborean blonde:
I trade my life for a tin ring
or for Sigmund's sword,
or for the orb Charlemagne held in his hands: to let
/the ball go rolling...

I trade my life for the idiot's or the saint's
candid halo;
I trade it for the red collar
the fat Capet got around his neck;
or for the solid shower that fell upon the neck
of Charles I;
I trade it for a romance,
I trade it for a sonnet;
for eleven Angora cats
for a doggerel or a sata,
for a song;
for an incomplete pack of cards;
for a large knife, for a pipe, for an ancient harp...

or for that doll that cries
like any poet.

I trade my life -on credit- for a factory of sunsets
(with red glows);
for a gorilla from Borneo;
for two Sumatran panthers;
for the pearls swarthy Cleopatra drank-
or for her little nose that must be in some Musseum;
I trade my life for old lamps,
or for Jacob's ladder or for his pottage of lentils...

or for two minute holes
-on my temples- through which in gray rotten humors
/flow
all the boredom, all the nuisance, all the horror
/I keep in my head...!

I gamble my life, I barter my life.
I have lost it
anyway...