This morning, faithful to its promise,
The early sun seeped through the room
In an oblique strip of saffron
From the curtains to the couch. It covered with its burning ochre
The nearby woods, the village homes,
My bedstead and my still moist pillow,
The edge of wall behind the books. Then I remembered the reason why
My pillowcase was slightly damp.
I had dreamed you were walking through the woods
One after another to see me off.
You walked in a crowd, singly, in pairs,
Then someone remembered that today
Was the sixth of August, old style,
The Transfiguration of Our Lord. Ordinarily a flameless light
Issues on this day from Tabor,
And autumn, clear as a sign held up,
Rivets all gazes to itself. And you walked through little, beggarly,
Naked, trembling alder scrub
To the spicy red woods of the graveyard
Burning like stamped gingerbread. The sky superbly played the neighbor
To the hushed crowns of its trees,
And distances called to each other
In the drawn-out voices of the cocks. Death, like a government surveyor,
Stood in the woods among the graves,
Scrutinizing my dead face,
So as to dig the right-sized hole. You had the physical sensation
Of someone’s quiet voice beside you.
It was my old prophetic voice
Sounding, untouched by decay: “Farwell, azure of Transfiguration,
Farwell, the Second Savior’s gold. Ease with a woman’s last caress
The bitterness of my fatal hour. “Farwell, years fallen out of time!
Farwell, woman: to an abyss
Of humiliations you threw down
The challenge! I am your battlefield. “Farwell, the sweep of outspread wings,
The willful stubbornness of flight,
And the image of the world revealed in words,
And the work of creation, and working miracles.” 1946-1953 Tr. from Russian by Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky
Pantheon Books 2010 | 
