Speak, but be cautious

Arkadii Dragomoshchenko
translated by Serguey Artiushkov and Anna Halberstadt

Speak, but be cautious.
Soaking wet guests knock on the doors as simple as faith
giving their names and the years, as if tearing petals from flowers.
Slouching and old, they resemble my father, whom I have now outgrown.

But how poor are my guests! And how poverty’s tender!
Only youth can compete with it in tenderness,
and lake lilies, and, possibly, somnambular snow,
that is burying slowly the evening groves.

Oh, how poor are the guests.
And my youth is departing,—I said to my father, spread on the bed of
his winter
(he was diminished in half by his illness, and crying,)—
Who would have guessed it departs in this way?
For this are shadows to blame—the shadows, that lure us: of clouds,
of plants and of lovers,—
We studied the structure of shadows like wizards study the element of fire.
So does water reflect on the stem of the Sun on a moonlit night—
first with a long curve of unknowing, then parting, then memories,
singing in murmuring roots.
Now I know why the swing creaks and whose baby cries in a snow-drift.

Knots of cupolas flake,
a passerby flies above hunchbacked bridges over the wormy canals.
Carefree smoke’s getting killed over the melting darkness.

The day is being composed in an intricate way, weaved from the nightly
conversions.
And, speaking of which, always—stay on the cautious side.