Innokenty Annensky
Dying

Thank God, here is the shade again!
Why it is I do not know,
But since the morning I have felt
This dying hanging over me
All the livelong twilit day!
Serving out its bitter time
Between decrepit yellow walls,
Shrivelled, shuddering on its string,
A gloomy red balloon hangs there
Between decrepit yellow walls!
And impotent, just like a shade,
All this livelong twilit day
Keeps tugging, tugging at the string,
Unable to cut short its pain
All this livelong twilit day…
If only night came quickly, night!
To feel yourself slipping away
Into swooning, reconciled
And stupefied, going out again
Into the stupefying night!
And if up there above my head
That dark red thing, barely alive
Would wait its time over the bed
Before becoming so like me…
That dark thing, barely alive,
Up there, right above my head…

Translated by Peter France