before it blazes forth?
Arise, then, stand forth, o wretched comrade! Soldiers should not laze about.
We drink to the faith that lives unto death: beyond that, disloyalty has no abode.
3. THE UNFAITHFUL WIFE
Since the day you came home
and did not look at me,
everything changed inside.
Like that sick dog who
lies there sighing,
so does my soul languish and pine.
For the sinner, the whole world intercedes,
but for the innocent, only a miracle.
So let there be a miracle as witness unto me.
Show Your truth, o God,
show him that I am truthful!
Suddenly the dog, that poor creature,
shook his head quickly,
ran up to her happily,
licked her hand tenderly—
and fell down to the earth, dead.
God knows things about a man
that he himself does not know.
4. ASSURANCE
Even if they shall laugh at you and make fun,
you shall lie there as Lazarus did,
lie still and silent before the heavens—
even then shall you not be as Lazarus.
Alas, it is good to be likened
unto the black earth from the garden,
to the many-colored dust from the road,
to the cry of the smallest child, forgotten,
left behind in the fields . . .
no other thing do they ask of you.
5. LULLABY
On a hill, in a rare forest of spruce,
on the highest, delicate treetop,
a cradle is fastened.
The wind rocks it.
There with the cradle is a little cage,
and with the cage, a hollow spruce tree.
In the cage, a clever bird sings
and burns, as brightly as a candle.
Sleep, it says, sleep my little dove,
when you awake, your dreams will come true:
you can be poor, you can be rich,
you can be a wave on the ocean sea,
you can be an angel of the Lord.
6. THE RETURN: A POEM ABOUT ALEKSEI
How goodly it is to simply return:
to a city, where all is changed,
to a garden, where some trees
are distant stumps, others
creak in the wind, as they never did before,
or to a house, where they grieve that you’re gone.
To return, and not to say one’s name.
To be silent, then, unto death.
Let them guess for themselves,
let them ask passersby,
let them understand, and yet understand it not.
And the objects of the world shine,
like tiny distant stars.
7. DESIRE
There’s no telling what’s occurred to me:
when someone, anyone, is praised,
then I should be praised still more,
but for what?—that’s not for me to say;
or, that there is no such anger,
no endlessly forgotten village,
and no creature so worthless,
that a spirit could not rise overhead,
a wondrous fife singing out to its treasure;
that there is no death among deaths
whose forces could be set against
my patient, slow-moving life,
like wormwood and weeds—
There’s no telling what’s occurred to me
and will occur, year after year.
8. THE MIRROR
My dearest one, even I do not know
Why such things exist:
a mirror hovers nearby
no bigger than a lentil
or a grain of millet.
But what burns and flickers within it,
what looks out, flares, and fades—
better not to see that at all.
Life, after all—is a not a very large thing:
all of it, every bit, can gather itself up
on the tip of a finger, the end of an eyelash.
And death spreads all around it, a vast sea.
9. THE VISION
I look out at you, but it is not you I see:
my old father
