Vera Zvyagintsev

I want you to remember me again,
Not as a long epistle, but a quatrain,
Nor as a longitude of the continuing rains,
Rather as flooding over roofs a short rain.

And then, let you, who has remembered me,
Hear no steps of jade that’s tired, rather
The ringing thud of Cabardinian steed…
Let it be so – I don’t want another.


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, August, 2001