Like March snow, you
spend white until it
thaws — dark patches,
perhaps brightened

by a pack of cigarettes —
empty throw – away,
open to damp winds,
brand name happily erased.

If I look at it, why ?  Nearby
something shines —
tenderly: I want to believe
in a drop of snow.

White is not spent — spendor
to the skies — white is not time!
Where earth darkens, there
white lasts — white lasts.

Translated from the Russian by Leo Yankevich.

Woods, too tired to walk into the white,
did you not find a way to warm up
to the blue amid the branches, wrapped
round pines along a squirrel run ?

The opposite with people.  They must squeeze
their bodies into heavy clothes,
and yet they do not manage to get warm
their blood squeezed slowly into numbness.

In people, too: a body with no room
for the warming of the soul, even
a body with sufficient ease of movement,
even when it’s comfortable.

What shall I be wrapped round by ?  On tree trunks
in a clearing there’s a squirrel run,
striving for a soft and fiery height
higher than the eye can see.

Translated from the Russian by Leo Yankevich.

A storm cloud strikes a street
with hail to mask despair
(a passage to this earth
with no choice in the air) ?

The creation, liberty
here, the movement within
brightly lit, only
street lamps and summer din ?

Hailstones, feel the choice ?
At evening seen by all:
it comes abruptly, weightless
in the waterfall.

And you, before your fall,
can touch a street lamp’s beam
amid the misty noises
and follow light to dream.

Translated from the Russian by Leo Yankevich.

People roam the stalks
searching for new life there,
and each just talks and talks —
as if all is prepared:

among them all the chatter
is an old dirty wall
(no wallpaper) — dusty litter —
still glued before the fall.

Rolled – up is a stalk
whose creaking sound is white,
as if it wished to mock,
were march woods in the light.

Yet nothing can renew
a homestead been undone.
(Better if the glue
were fiery setting sun.)

Translated from the Russian by Leo Yankevich.