Mikhail Kuzmin

The weeks are becoming more lazy and mingling,
The lightest flash is delayed by sad thoughts,
But a heart is praying, a heart is building: 
It’s not a coffin – a house it plots.

The carpenter, gaily, will build here a tower,
>From not cold granite, but from shining wood,
Tho’ we be not sure that we have a power:
It’s sure for us and it understood.

It’s always in a hurry; it’s always in thunders,
And we like the dead: lost of thoughts and of dreams…
But once, we will wake up before the wonder:
Tho’ we were sleeping, the house exists.

But what is it, Father? A lethal syndrome?
The hand is pressed to a heart and hold…
You, builder, hadn’t finished the roof of my home:
The worshipped finial isn’t installed!


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, December, 2000