back to myself, my own identity.
A polar bear with no floe.
Where
not to strive at companionship (I don't try),
where
to lose self-respect-makes no difference.
Neither am 1 lured by my native
tongue, its nursing call.
1 do not care if I'm greeted
or greet with unintelligible words!
(That reader gorging himself with tons
of papers, news-scandalmonger)
he is a man of this age,
as for me-I stand pre-every age.
Stunned, like a tree stump
bereft of the alley it stood on.
People-I don't care about, things-I don't care,
and maybe even less care
about whatever came with my birth:
peculiarities, traits, features,
data-all wiped out as if by a hand:
my soul being born-somewhere.
My land won't preserve me.
So that even the keenest detective
searching far and wide through my soul
will not find a birthmark!
Each house is alien to me, each shrine empty,
all things-all the same, all things-make no difference.
But if along the road a bush
stands, especially a rowan. ..
Translated from the Russian
by
Vittoria Bradshaw
