Gleb Grobovsky

Under the weight of silence and wet dust
Of five black centuries – till awake their hearts – 
The old man’s grave is troublesome as laugh,
As owl’s cry or sin of awful stuff!…
Arriving on the earth, obedient as grass,
He lived, a rebel, like this owl does.
He broke through the common silent line,
And, fierce, wept on his ludicrous pine!
He’s in the grave. And these five hundred years,
Transferred themselves into five hundred chains:
They press him in, and hold under arrest…
But flame of memory still ravages in breast, - 
It hums; it hums… like real world in sleep,
And makes the thought utterly ripe and steep.


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, September 29, 2001