Afanasy Fet
Never

I am awake... A coffin-lid... I strain
To lift my hands from it in violent shaking.
I cry for help. I call to mind the pain
That I endured at death, — but now I’m waking!
Like cobwebs, easily the lid unrolled
I push aside, and leave my house of mould.

I stand, — all blinded by the gleaming snow.
Beyond all doubting, breaks the vault asunder.
I sec the frost. No door keeps me below.
I shall go home. How great will be the wonder!
I know the park. I cannot miss the way.
But strange it looks to me, and changed, to-day...

I run through snow. Into the air profound
Stretch unmoved boughs from trees decayed and hoary
No track, no echo. Silence all around,
As in Death’s kingdom in a world of story.
There is the house... In desolation, all!
My outstretched arms in stupefaction fall.

The village sleeps in a dumb sheet of snow,
By endless, pathless, desolate plains surrounded.
Yes, so it is! That distant hill I know,
The church on it where once the bells’ peal sounded.
And as a traveller, dead and frozen, lies.
It shows its outline to the cloudless skies.

Upon the snow no moth, no winter bird.
I see it all! The earth has long been cold
And dead. Then, why should still be heard
Breath in my breast? Why did the grave unfold
To give me back again? My consciousness
Is bound — to what? and what does it confess?

Nowhere to go, and no one to embrace,
Where Time has vanished into endless vastness!
O Death, return, and gather the last trace
Of life’s predestined burden to thy fastness!
And thou. Earth’s frozen body, onward fly
And take my corpse into eternity!

Translated by Cecil Maurice Bowra