A Farewell to Friends

In wide-brimmed hats and long duffel coats,
With notebooks full of your verse,
Long ago like fallen lilac sprigs,
Into dust you've since dispersed.

You're in that land, where no shape's ready-made,
Where everything's disjointed, blurred, aborted,
Where the sky is replaced by a burial mound,
And a motionless moon has orbited.

There, in a foreign, inaudible tongue,
A synod of soundless insects chants,
There, with a little lantern in his hand,
A beetle-man greets an acquaintance.

Is it peaceful for you, comrades?
Is it easy for you? And is forgetting only just?
Now your brothers are the roots, the ants,
Blades of grass, whispers, and columns of dust.

Now your sisters are carnations,
Lilac tips, chicks, and chips of wood...
And you're powerless to remember that language
Up there where your forsaken brother stood.

There's no place for him yet in those parts,
Where you've vanished, as shadows lightly cursed,
In wide-brimmed hats and long duffel coats,
With notebooks full of your verse.

1952

Memory

Months of languor have settled in
Can it be that life is over,
Or, its work done, has come
Like a late guest to the table...

It wants to drink, but won't touch wine,
And wants to eat, but has no appetite.
It listens to the whisper of an ash
And to a goldfinch singing outside.

It sings of that distant land,
Where just visible through a storm,
The mound of a lonely grave
Lies beneath white crystal snow.

There, a birch tree whispers no reply,
Its frozen veins rooted in ice,
And high above in a ring of frost
The blood-stained moon drifts by.

1952

An Old Tale

In this world where our
Role is obscure and frail,
You and I will both grow old
Like the king in a fairy tale.

Our life, shining patiently,
Burns out in a forbidden land,
And silently we meet there
Fate's inevitable hand.

And when those silver streaks
Begin to glitter in your hair,
I'll tear up my notebooks
And leave my last poems there.

Let the soul splash like a lake
At the sill of underground gates,
And the crimson leafage clearing
The water's surface shakes.

1952

Fireflies

Words are like lamplit fireflies.
While scattered and unseen in the dark,
Their pure flame is dim and insignificant,
And their living dust invisible.

But look at them in a Black Sea spring,
Where oleanders sleep in solemn bloom,
Where a sea of fireflies glows in the nocturnal abyss,
And waves beat the shore, longing for summer.

The whole world merges in a single breath,
There, the earth spins beneath your feet,
And their flames no longer confirm creation,
Just a flickering fire of distant storms.

There, an unknown fanfare of sounds
Drones slowly and hovers up above,
What are pitiable words? Like insects!
And yet these creatures obey me.

1949

With Leeuwenhoek's Magic Device

With Leeuwenhoek's magic device
Science discovered
Signs of astonishing life
On the surface of a water-drop.

The realm of birth and death
Is the link in an endless chain,
In this world of wondrous creations,
It's so minute and plain!

Except the abyss, where meteors fly,
Nothing is grand or simple,
And the expanses are equally boundless
For planets, microbes, and people.

As a result of their common effort,
The flame of Pleiades is fanned.
Comets fly more light-winged,
Constellations speed as planned.

In a corner of a miniscule universe,
Under a microscope's screen,
Fate's secret sets in motion
That same immutable stream.

There, I sense the breathing of a star,
Hear the speech of organic masses,
And the headlong rush of creation,
So familiar to us as it passes.

1948

Midday

The hot sultry summer
Comes dazzling by degrees.
The grass, scorched by the sun,
Is dressed in a moist vapor.

The burdock, yellowed by heat,
Unfolds its pink armour
And stands, choking with flies,
Beneath the tall windows of a hut.

In the bloom of nature
There's a brief moment of surfeit,
A time when the heads of plants
Let a pearl-white gum secrete.

Love's trappings have ebbed,
Passion has run dry, yet the past's flame
Dies in embers and wades in the blood,
Troubling not the body, but the brain.

But the flame fades towards midday,
And in the heaven's midst
Only nature, pausing,
Feels the patch of deadly heat.

1948