Evgeny Evtushenko
There aren’t uninteresting people in the world...

There aren’t uninteresting people in the world.
All lives, like histories of planets, get unfurled.
Each one is special and exclusive on its own,
And not one planet like another has been known.

If someone chose to live an unobtrusive life
In unobtrusiveness apart from worldly strife,
The interest in them was never valued less —
Precisely due to their uninterestingness.

A secret, private world is rightly owned by each.
Inside that world, the finest moment within reach;
Inside that world, the most gruesome, frightful hour,
But somehow knowing that is never in our power.

Whenever it is time for anyone’s demise,
It sadly is the time when their first snowfall dies,
Along with their first kiss and their first battle fought…
Each person takes away all that they ever sought.

Still something stays behind — perhaps the bridges, books,
The cars and canvases with artists’ perfect nooks.
Yes, certainly a lot is destined to remain —
And yet, there’s always something taken all the same!

Such is the ruthless law of all this game still played.
It’s not the people who must pass — their worlds must fade.
Those down-to-earth and sinful people we recall.
But did we know them well, if anything at all?

What do we know of friends and brothers — anyone?
What do we know of her, the true and only one?
And of our dear fathers, to whom our lives we owe?
Though knowing everything, there’s not a thing we know.

And sadly people leave and vanish in the past.
There is no way their secret worlds could ever last.
And time and time again, caught in this tragic scheme,
I have been forced by that finality to scream.

Translated by Yuri Menis