Vadim Shefner

How cold is the garden – alone, uncouth and unrest,
By the square snow-drifts – how cold all is here and poor.
To the non-real house, I’ll trod up by crystalline steps, 
At invisible doors, I’ll nock – carefully, very unsure. 

Voices sound so glassy on feasts of invisible men,
But the night conversation’s forlorn, though utterly clear:
– “I have come for some warm,… for a minute, or maybe for ten.”
– “No, for ever, for ever… We’ll never let you get from here.”

–  “You had seen you in dreams, but to us you are taken alive,
You’re awakened forever inside steady walls of suppression.
You’re, in flakes of this snow, in rings of this smoke, revived,
And shall not ever find in the glasses of Earth your reflection.”  


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, April, 2001