In April seventy eight
I lay on the floor in a student residence in Lviv,
almost unconscious from drinking
and eighteen years old.
Above me something was going on, my older
mates had guests, drank tea
with wine, chattered about art.
My head was whirling in the centrifuge.

It seems that it was unhappy love
and problems with the end of term essay.

Through the mist in my eyes
I caught sight of the dishevelled outline of Dem and fell
into a yet deeper abyss: impossible! Delirium
tremens: Dem in my room!

I don't know if it's good or bad anymore
but at the age of eighteen we still need
cults, icons, or rather idols.
Dem was an alternative painter.
Dem was a hippie, ‘sure' guy, denim,
asocial, universal.
The pigs didn't round him up every day.
Western snobs bought his paintings.
Like all fanatics I was ready to wash
the holes in his feet.
He was the saint of my cult, you know what I mean?

In October 2002
(Not bad, eh? A quarter century went by in the blink of an eye!)
they didn't let him in to my poetry evening.
They say he was almost unconscious
from drinking and was in no fit state. Particularly not
for such an alternative meeting.
All that he left behind this time -
was some kind of lithograph
the size of a postage stamp, for me.
I don't even know what to do with it.
It's kind of weird to hang a postage stamp on the wall.

But I'm not talking about that -
I mean this eternal just-missing each other. So many faces
sucked beyond reach into the septic tanks!
They don't even scream from there anymore,
they don't even scream.

And so much of everything didn't happen that no more
is going to happen now.

And on the other hand -
what a novel we wrote together, not realising
it ourselves! What a shit hot epic
over the space of a whole quarter century! Dem! You hear me?
Dem!!!

I'm screaming to you from my septic tank.