ILYA GUTNER - POEMS

Ilya Gutner was born in the Soviet Union and grew up in New York. Was a student of Russian literature at Brown until the professors spoke to the police and so that ceased to be an option, and now studies world philosophy in Shanghai, China.

​Saturn’s saddle

Five poems about love in China


Explanation:

They want their poets tame
because they themselves are tame
when in a crowd together
they punish those not in
to make themselves seem something.

Is it really freedom if the police come along?
Minute of silence for Twain’s horse Soldier Boy the Fossil,
I sit remembering how sexual misconduct killed free speech.

Ovid comes by in the mornings
to teach the art of love:
says modest praise wins proudest women.

           Three thoughts about America.
           Shanghai, China.
            Horse hour sunny noon.

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1
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Saturn’s saddle is not in the stars
where their field is plowed by constellations
nor a chain of islands on the sea
mingling in the water with the stars
in reflection as if in a mirror
on a crowded sidewalk smashed at noon:

and am I a gatherer of shards
restless when not looking for reflections shattered
in a thousand faces on the street,
or one saddled on the planet Saturn
or the laughing farmer of old Rome
who taught stones to eat men’s shadows?



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2
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There was a spring of waters in old Rome
of superstitious fame for curing broken hearts and love’s
less lovely side effects and at this place Catullus
contracted syphilis or something of the sort and died.

Now gossiping about the poets, how they lived and
consequently died, I sat at dinner with myself alone
and asked for conversation’s sake: How do you figure,
according to the figure, we must live and die?

The answer came, as might have been expected, rudely:
In any way you like. But then I said,
pouring myself red wine of comfort: What I like
makes death a comedy and God a pleasant sinner.

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3
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How to describe the bridge of emptiness
in the turned thighs of a young city woman
so you will envy me for what I do not have?

A bridge raised on two thighs
over a trembling emptiness of space
not on the way to love.

You’ll say: A pedigreed young hound,
tight-nerved, shakes petted, and a girl
raised preciously smells boredom from afar
but time fills what is empty in her.

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4
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A bird passes by my window,
a girl passes by my doorstep:
a bridge raised on slim thighs
over an emptiness of lost self-knowledge.

Lost money is no longer stolen,
lost manhood nothingness to treasure
and every treasure learns its loss:
we live without the necessary things.

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​5

A deepness of dark eyes
chances to disturb me
in the night.

My vanity imagines a connection
between myself and this
thing of chance.

And I am pulled at
to fill my emptiness
with satisfying dreams.

Man’s hunger asks for bread,
his thirst wants water,
his unfulfillment love.

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