Trafika Europe 13 - Russian Ballet

THE MIRACLE OF... (prose poetry) By Vyacheslav Kupriyanov Translated from the Russian by Alex Cigale

THE FIRST MIRACLE OF CREATION

A certain man by the name of Go would never lie down in the daytime, and it was impossible for anyone to get him up, by any means or for any reason, at nighttime. And, he would also demand similar discipline from others and, because of this, would often speak with derision of night watchmen, none of whom, by the way, did he have the occasion to have met personally. He would explain this principled stance by referring to universal propositions: When on one half of our round planet everyone is standing and, on the other half, everyone is lying down, then, a corresponding imbalance ensues which forces the Earth to rotate around its axis. In order that this revolution never cease, those who are standing on one side of the planet must go to bed in a timely fashion, and those lying down on the other side must take care, also, by this time, to have risen out of bed. In this way, all our planet’s inhabitants recieve an 319