«If you have eyes, through day you'll see night, / not the one lit up by that inflamed disk. / In vain two swallows are bursting to get out, / darting at the window with a faint chirp. One cannot puncture with a sharp-angled wing / that transparent, but sturdy membrane over there, / nor ca...»
«Not by my mother, but by the Tula peasant woman / Yelena Kuzina was I reared. She would / warm my swaddling clothes above the stove-bench, / ward off bad dreams at bedtime with the sign of the cross. She knew no fairy tales and did not sing, / and yet she always kept for me / in a cheris...»
«Blizzards have whirled all night, but the morning's clear. / Still a Sunday laziness crawls across my body, / and the Church of the Annunciation hasn't yet / come out of mass. I go out to the yard. / How small, all of it: a little house, a little twist of smoke above the roof! Silvery-rosy,...»
«With a cane he feels his way, / blind man on a random walk, / carefully he plants a foot / and mumbles something to himself. / In the whiteness of his eyes / a universe reflected back: / a house, a field, a fence, a cow, / patches of a pale blue sky — / everything that he can't see»