I’m trying to fit my destiny into

the eye of a needle, like a pony

into the tightly drawn square collar.

Yet it remains a zero, like a vent

sash. Only a geranium is screaming on

the windowsill, “intolerable.”

We survive by blank verse only.

The life is random, memory lives

only in words. The silence of the roads

hangs heavy. But I believe our inner square

where we’re keen will budge and the pony

will go capering again, all bitterness forgotten.

Translated by Max Nemtsov