Grigori Dashevsky

The night approaches. Dusk drafts on buildings their future ruins. Dusk deepens windows and apertures. It hollows stones with shadows like with water. It foretells the near death of a hundred clouds to the shining host. A thin layer of dust, the seer leaves his footprints on the roofs as he walks home from the future not his own, swallowing his voice — in its rays, fat blood flows down the golden armor. Wet blue entrails. Large heads have rolled down the shoulders. Speech has grown silent in deep mouths. ................................................. The signs of a life without past will emerge like lies through the lines of an old page, emptiness will turn into loss, foreign sand into Ithaca. Ithaca is the time when there’s nowhere to go. If it’s night, it means the night is the end of the voyage. A sackcloth hiding the shoulders of the stranger is truer than speeches about past and future he won’t make. Nobody will. On the streets rain readies hollows for the funeral, already overgrown with grass. In a long puddle he sees: a pauper, a random victim of the skies hangs with his head down. In height, he is a cloud, the size of a lost faith in returning home. ....................... So should I, a pauper sitting by a stranger’s door, declare:I’m Odysseus, and I’m back. Should I say: I’m recognized. After the mourning songs tears are still rolling down my face. I have been summoned to clothe the past in the shining ice.