We always live our childhood again.
Even then, we don’t want it back.
Like me. In each year-before-last’s memory
is something melancholy and oppressive, probably
war and oppression’s shadow from which it was so difficult,
almost impossible to get free, and still
some hazy sadness. I believe that only as a man
have I known joy, and only then,
when I began to write, the mist cleared away
and these shadows. Even from memory,
the essential is born pure:
air, water, earth, trees and houses,
and old walkway slabs on streets in suburbia
poured from concrete or cut from flat, natural stone.
Neither the eyes nor the soles of the feet have forgotten them,
and when I see them again, they are cold and soft
and pedestrians’ feet have pressed them still further into a slope
so that with a child’s carriage or crutches
it is already difficult to travel
Jaama, Liiva or Tähtvere streets.
What will become of them? Will anyone
make them neatly level again,
or will they be covered with asphalt, and wheels
roll more easily over our childhood
paths and memories.
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