Pavel Antokolsky

What is remembrance, yet? A closet, a cellar  
Our life is thrown in disorder there,
Sleep, by a beach, the vessels anywhere,
Unmoved forever from the quiet shallow. 

The roads, streets. The friend dead long ago.
The strong hangovers after others’ feasts,
The books. The theaters. The labors’ sacred mist,
Through which we hadn’t ability to go.

Remembrance has the immense store of ashes,
That had been stoned and forever lain.         
We always hear just the same refrain, -
There sings for us the same permeating sadness,
That’s strongly caught until the roots of hair
By all forgot, all that will never happened!  


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, December, 2000