I dreamed we were sailing through rice fields
(they make paper out of rice),
Along a wet brilliance, along mirrors,
Along a marshy archipelago.
In a paper boat, a pale boat,
No splashing could be heard, the oars were so light,
In the mist the boat gets wet, is sinking.
And tiny lights will appear soon.
The shoots of rice, standing out of the water,
Look askance with their Korean eyes - so that
I should understand - an object of love be thou -
They are. A candelabrum of love branches out.
With an ***** song, like a pipe inside a pipe,
(It's natural to love everyone and immediately too),
Look: memory of oneself is going away
To the bottom like a clumsy dead diver.
Look: the lights are spinning round like rain,
Not falling to the earth - these are souls
Whose inconsolable love
For the Creation and the Creator, the soul will not extinguish.
Oh, how long ago I knew all this -
When I was still a two-legged woman
And now I'm drowning, now I'm lying on the bottom
Of love, like a million-armed octopus.
On the shallow bottom, in the rice fields,
Belonging to earth, water and sky,
With a living longing - and sweet fear -
Those will fall in love with me who think 'I was not there'.
by Elena Shvarts from Contemporary Russian Poetry
translated by Gerald S. Smith