Aleksey Apukhtin

No echo, no word, no good expression, 
Like a glum desert, world lays between us;
Without any answer to the question,
My frightened thought lades soul with ballast!
Can it be true that midst the wrath and torment
The past would vanish, leaving no trace,
Like easy sound of the tune, forgotten,
Like any star, failed in the dark night’s space?    


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, April, 2001