3 Poems
by Aleksey Porvin, translated by Peter Golub

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*

Dim branches sponging
wind closing itself;
will anything in me
take to remember them?

The wind hasn’t managed – here
is air, rocks, some shrubs
– what is left in them?
Not everything can go.

Will fall remember
me? What faculty
of memory is in it?
Wind, return the branches.

Continue – leave everything here –
I will remember you:
giving the remains
of the day’s last boughs.

*

Coax the nimble dawn
out of the dark streaming branches;
walk along the shore, yourself
change into glimmer.

The trees – you see them – do not hurry
to warn you of the clear water:
for them it is the good, but you
will never know it.

The forest depth is silent;
confirmed by the revived leaves –
with great exertion
light descends through the water column.

What will be caught, calls
the arrival, walking to the shallow –
will not escape your hands
will no swim away.







*

For the pause, prayed away from us,
hush, the two string world:
at the beginning of the voice, and later – nowhere
make a noise.

For music there must also be a string,
words walk on it:
not up, nor to the side can a step be taken,
otherwise – silence.

Otherwise this pause will rise
a silent bleach
over the singing, which waits, when to enter,
arrive forever.

Unable to be silence, while
someone’s ear still holds us –
we are not cleaned by music;
we too are without redemption.