The rain stops and, for an instant, the sun emerges from clouds.
The shadow of the pen appears on the white paper.
A redwing is singing somewhere. The wind rises
and raindrops roll off the leaves of the honeysuckle.
They say I haven’t written as suggestively as in my youth,
in the book Of dust and colours. The sun
casts a yellowish light on the quivering green world
and vanishes once again behind a cloud. I remember
that I must make a roof for the empty beehive
where the wasps nested. In the autumn I must trim down
some apple tree branches growing in front of the loft door
that are a nuisance when we want to put hay in the loft. Also
I should wash some used preserve cans:
they’re good for nails or to mix paint.
When I tried for the first time seriously to write a poem,
it was in Russian. It begins like this:
Nad…i mrachnym Baikalom
odinokaya chayka letit…
Isn’t it suggestive?
There is a time for everything. At the gate
the water ash, Ptelea trifoliata, is in bloom
and the rye stalks are already rustling dry.
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