Konstantin Simonov
Lethargy

I was but a child when Granny told me
Of the girl who wakened in her grave
From lethargic sleep, and how she struggled
In her mortal terror, sobbed and raved.

And the folk who heard those eerie cries,
Moved the dreadful load and looked, appalled,
At the horror in her staring eyes,
Suffering too cruel to behold...

I was ill. To Mother at my side
I raised frightened eyes with fever glazed,
Begging her to promise if I died
Not to bury me for twenty days.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Yet, it’s what we do to our own love.
Every night we watch it slowly dying,
Begging us to help. We are unnerved,
But to help we can’t, for all our trying.

When it draws its last breath in the morning
Of a sad and rainy autumn day,
We throw clots of earth upon the coffin,
Set the cross up, sigh and walk away.

But supposing it did not forsake us,
Something this one love just could not do?
Was it lethargy we had mistaken
For its death, and buried it too soon?

We’re already making up excuses —
Empty words, for which we have a flair,
While our love’s still whispering something to us,
In an agony of cold despair.

Listen well before it is too late,
Hear how very fervently it.prays,
pleading for its life, it begs us wait
And not bury it for twenty days...

Translated by Olga Shartse