Mirra Lokhvitskaya
Our times

What customs these are, what an age!
All lazily drag their burden,
Thinking of no one else.
Bored with their sleepy gatherings,
With everyday diversions,
With their affected gaiety

We, entrenched in our humble desires,
Seek half-tints,
Hating dark and light.
No illusion of happiness beckons us.
Nor visions of celebration and power;
In our dreams, there’s no such sight.

All has irretrievably vanished.
Where are those, then, who
Once shimmered with a golden aura?
Those, who strove toward the cherished goal,
Who shrank not from torture,
Nor groaned under the knout?

Where are those, ignorant of sorrows,
Who dissipated the years
In a wild, bacchanalian flash?
Where are you, people? — Gone, gone!
Everything’s irretrievably passed,
Everything’s extinguished without a trace.

And to the hypocrite’s delight,
Life crawls along in a gray fog,
Deaf and dumb.
Faith sleeps. Knowledge is silent.
And over us boredom reigns,
The mother of shame and sin.

Translated by Temira Pachmuss