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Poems
199
I suddenly asked, “Where’s Lyoshka?”
And Uncle Timosha jerked his bare head
in the direction of the road.
“He – what? – broke the star?”
Uncle Timosha was silent.
“Broke it to bits…?”
His shoulders shook,
and he buried his face in his cap.
And I – in a white dress and thin tights –
went past Uncle Timosha,
crossed the yard
and went out in the road,
where not a single streetlight shone
in the dark,
stabbed in the eye with the shards of Lyoskha’s star,
and only then did it come to me
that it had nothing to do with fuel –
the world had ended –
and I ran
barefoot
in the frost….