A Memory Card
You will recite very clearly, like a prayer,
an excerpt from a text – your imperishable creation
in the perishable silence and its corners
within your dream. In the garden, the Matthiola will lie down
like a luminous remedy along with Corvalol,
sucking up all the rain to the last drop.
As a cameraman will fail to catch a certain moment, you will miss
the acupuncture of the threatening lightning bolts
palpating terrain and river.
The Chimes chime like a guess that strikes:
less time for life, and even less
for a wellspring to flow out of a hand.
Through the flashes and thunderous protests,
you will download onto a memory card the ownerless gestures
as into a train station which can warm you up instantly
and hide you from rain, or dishonour,
or a steady neurosis – or someone’s cunning words
and what will later block out the pain of those words.
translated from Ukrainian by Svetlana Ischenko