Bella Akhmadulina

The player’s disk – a silly wonder –
The simple player – trifles at all!
It’s heard as if were distant thunder
From the earth’s deeps, from ‘under-under’
Of roots, of sweat, of grass and fall 
Where humus just begins to boil,
Raising to heaven a gray steaming,    
No, deeper than the fathomed deeps,
From Hell where a born ruby sleeps,
And has our nature its beginning –
Got out, nearing … At last,
We’re reached by earth’s and waters’ bass
With which it was declared so slow
As if not knowing what to do,
So high-importantly and low:
“… The road, I’ll not say where to…”
We do not speak in these strange ways.
The mankind doesn’t have such ideas:
Neither in dreams nor by a guess,
One could name all that here appears,
That in our ignorance, so fine,
We call “the ever living line.”


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, June 12, 2006