"To Be the Strongest One..."

To be the strongest one or weakest?
We have to choose one from these both.
To be just a cold-hearted witness
or a ‘good’ hunter, always robust?   

To watch a rain over the waters,
or clouds, having no goal;
to hear a tree’s unhurried growth,
a babble of a brooklet cold?

Or not to see all that’s around…
And only an eternal labor…
which will make you the deafened, blinded,
and fully downcast for ever –

for ever mute one and alone,
without a joy, a tongue without – 
like laying by some path a stone,
a baby in a cradle-mound?

A contrast to my deepest sadness –
the eve, so doubtlessly brilliant…
For all, refused by all my senses,
when I was one the strong and merciless,
comes from the evening distance distant.


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, December, 2002