| "...but the one who follows me is stronger than me..."
|
| from Matthew
|
| Are you leaving?! |
| Leave -
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| For customs and clouds.
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| From farewell handshakes
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| My arm has lost weight!
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| I am not a mourner and not a guard,
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| And I won't beat the timpani.
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| Are you leaving?! |
| Your will!
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| So, so be it!
|
| And do not care what is sour in the heart,
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| What a farewell, like a lump in the throat ...
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| There is no more strength or meaning
|
| Bet on this game!
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| You just play
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| And already from the deck - jump! |
| -
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| Not a seven, not an ace, not a three,
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| Cursed lady of spades!
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| And from these mustachioed gangs,
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| From questionnaires and nightly worries -
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| Are you leaving?! |
| leave,
|
| Fly away - and God bless you!
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| Fly away to the wrong truth
|
| From the real frozen zones.
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| Just leave your dead
|
| Do not disturb their dead sleep.
|
| There - in Ponary and in Babi Yar, -
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| Where there is still no trace,
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| Only a piercing smell of burning
|
| Will live for hundreds of years!
|
| In Kazakhstan and Magadan,
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| Among the snow and feather grass…
|
| Is there a more godly land
|
| Whose godless land is this?!
|
| And under the marble obelisk
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| At the crossroads of squares,
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| Where, baptized by a single list,
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| Turned their death into people!
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| And above them birch trees rustle -
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| Trees have their own kinship!
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| And frosts ring above them
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| For Epiphany and Christmas!
|
| ... I am standing on the threshold of the year -
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| Your kinsman and your outcast,
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| Your last exodus singer,
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| But another will come for me!
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| With a hat on his eyes,
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| A daring fish that broke through the ice
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| He will go, slowly, along the ladder
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| Into a departing plane!
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| I'm standing... Is the strangeness great?!
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| I habitually wave my hand!
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| Leave! |
| And I will stay.
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| Someone must, defying fatigue,
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| Keep our dead in peace!
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| December 20, 1971 |