Olga Berggoltz

Don’t even try your looking back
At this gloom dark, at this gloom ice;
There someone waits on your feet’s track,
You can’t stop answering his eyes.
Today I looked back and… at once
I see: he looks at me, my friend,
With his alive eyes from the ice –
My single one until my end.
And I’d not known that ‘tis thus.
I’d thought another is my light.
But, oh, my plight, dream, paradise,
I live only when I’m your sight!
Only your look makes right my life,
I’m faithful only to your glance:
For all who lives – I am his wife,
Your widow – for both of us.  


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, March, 2002