Jurij Andruhovič: Welcome to my foolish dreamland (poem in English)

Welcome to my foolish dreamland

Taras is right when he says:
Alarm clocks should not drag us up in the mornings.
Morning is a time of doubt anyway,
total nostalgia. The worst that could happen.
The necessity to survive the rest of the day somehow
pins you to the bed. Win another half hour.
Consider what you saw.
Considering dreams –
an attempt to bring order to the night adventures,
to give form to the plots, brightness to the pictures.
What really happened? Why the hell
did a drunken Tomas leave dry
excrement under the seat? The sexy nun,
was she demanding something, when she pointed
at me? I still remember the clock.
There was an ocean of time left before departure,
but no way of leaving the trailer
crowded with friends. Why not?
It’s much worse, when you go, with a bunch of flowers,
to visit someone who actually
was killed a month ago, for a celebration evening.
Why the celebration? Another two minutes
and I’ll explain, I’ll chase the nun
I’ll make Tomas
clean up after himself…
Considering dreams
leads to nothing but parallel conclusions:
life passes. The problem of mornings
lies in the fact that life gets shorter and shorter.
Only in dreams, where everything is stupid,
does life look real.
And so, eternal. Win another half hour.

Translated by Sarah Luczaj
(source: Vilenica Almanac 2017)