Vadim Shefner

We don’t see in sleep what we want to be seemed, --  
We see only what dreams want of to be dreamed.
And dreams of a war still are aimed strait at us
Like ravishing muzzles of its machine-guns.

And dreams of the fires a worrier, blind,
And he, who is fed, dreams of bread of blockade.

And he, for whom we, long ago, stopped to wait,
Enters our homes with his easy gait.

Enter our friends of the old pre-war years,
Knowing not that they lay in the earth.

And shells, we have voided by mere a chance,
In battle of dreams, overtake us, at last. 

And, shivered, we lay in the nightly cold haze, --
Midst dreams and the real, on that neutral earth,
The night is so long, and to breath is so hard…
A stone of war lays on our heart.   


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, April, 2001