The Shroud

                To my wife Tatiana
The scarlet sun, the scar on sky above
The dusky wood, where we together move
Unceasingly as in the dream; we seek
The mushrooms; our goal, our prey is meek;
They are not wheat, but they are meat, they wait;
For beggars and for us delicious bait.
We go, but we unwillingly return
To the same place, where we must read the thorn:
The edge – the age; our destiny it is,
And we begin to guess, who tries to tease
Us with the same direction, with the same
Way, where misleads our eyes the lightless flame
Of the autumnal leafage; it is he
Wood-goblin, who misleads us, you and me;
He is enraged, in winter must he sleep;
On fallen leafs he tries again to leap;
He cries; is it the crisis or the whim?
And suddenly we see in thickets him.
He bows, he looks for something on the earth;
In our country reigns the death or dearth
Destroying destinies; maybe the tramp
Seeks mushrooms or the shelter in the swamp?
Maybe the ruffian is the Russian Job,
Who has no home, no money, and no job?
The age – the edge, and who can it avoid?
Wood-goblin would be rather unemployed,
If he would be; you ask me: who is who?
Isn’t unemployed to-day my Russia too?
It rushes, it flounders in the flexible rush,
Where mourns about its woes the throbbing thrush,
But now the winter is in stillness near,
And on the same place in despair we hear
The melody in spite of moldy smell;
There are no bellows, no, it is the bell,
And we don’t ask, for whom the bell now tolls,
For you, for me, for all us, whom it calls
From Heaven in the Heaven; is it loud
Or not, who knows? But suddenly the shroud
Of Virgin Mary we together see
Protecting holy Russia, you and me.      

3.11.1996.