Converted into linear meters

by Mikhail Aizenberg
     translated by J. Kates

* * *

Converted into linear meters
days that cannot be reconciled.
The people between them negligible,
maybe they should be born again.

It seems that their gray faces
painted on paper with charcoal lines.
And any one of the sheets is marked
in incomprehensible signs.

* * *

Suddenly from a thicket showed
a vengeful god peering like a crow.
He will not return to Euripides.
He sharpens arrows and hones
on us, resentful, a knife of bone.