Two poems in English

NOCTURNE

Just as a feather from a bird killed before Christ
as an upper needle of a snow star
on the church onion blown up last year
just as a kiss of beloved one
gone to the sky in the funeral flame
as a smile of a dead prisoner
expiring in the darkness of his cell
as that moment of solitude
which lasts for a century called life
as a rumpled leaf of grass
eaten by a cow being slaughtered and eaten
for the holiday in the village
destroyed thirty years ago

as

just as


but can anything match it?



STILL LIFE

These precious stones
in reddish rims
These snowy wings
relaxed on dry grass
looking like hairs
And two strips of blue coral
like the lips of the later

:

The face of a dead man
in the light of sunset.

Moscow, 1973