Arseny Tarkovsky

My poems: fledglings, heirs, Plaintiffs and executors, The silent ones, the loud, The humble and the proud. As soon as the shovel of time Threw me onto the potter’s wheel— Myself without kith or kin— I grew beneath the hand, a miracle. Something stretched out my long neck And hollowed round my soul And marked on my back Legends of flowers and leaves. I stoked the birch in the fire As Daniel commanded And blessed my red temper Until I spoke as a prophet. I had long been the earth— Arid, ochre, forlorn since birth— But you fell on my chest by chance From beaks of birds, from eyes of grass.

A blind man was riding an unheated train, From Bryansk he was traveling home with his fate. Fate whispered to him so the whole car could hear: And why should you care about blindness and war? It’s good, she was saying, you’re sightless and poor. If you were not blind, you’d never survive. The Germans won’t kill you, you’re nothing to them. Allow me to lift that bag on your shoulder— The one with the holes, the empty torn one. Let me just raise your eyelids wide open. The blind man was traveling home with his fate, Now thankful for blindness. Happy about it.