Arseny Tarkovsky
Life, life

1

I don't believe forebodings, nor do omens
Frighten me. I do not run from slander
Nor from poison. On earth there is no death.
All are immortal. All is immortal. No need
To be afraid of death at seventeen
Nor yet at seventy. Reality and light
Exist, but neither death nor darkness.
All of us are on the sea-shore now,
And I am one of those who haul the nets
When a shoal of immortality comes in.

2

Live in the house - and the house will stand.
I will call up any century,
Go into it and build myself a house.
That is why your children are beside me
And your wives, all seated at one table,
One table for great-grandfather and grandson.
The future is accomplished here and now,
And if I slightly raise my hand before you
You will be left with all five beams of light.
With shoulder blades like timber props
I hels up every day that made the past,
With a surveryor's chain I measured time
And travelled through as if across the Urals.

3

I picked an age whose stature measured mine.
We headed south, made dust swirl on the steppe.
Tall weeds were rank; a grasshopper was playing,
Brushed horseshoes with his whiskers, prophesied
And told me like a monk that I would perish.
I took my fate and strapped it to my saddle;
And now I've reached the future I still stand
Upright in my stirrups like a boy.

I only need my immortality
For my blood to go on flowing from age to age.
I would readily pay with my life
For a safe place with constant warmth
Were it not that life's flying needle
Leads me on through the world like a thread.

Translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair