Trafika Europe 13 - Russian Ballet

TEN POEMS By Aleksandr Kushner

Translated from the Russian by Carol Ueland & Robert Carnevale

A little Picture Made from Blocks

A little picture made from blocks, it’s almost complete. See: it’s a lion. There’s still a gap in the mane, And some hitch occurred with the tail, but there’s time ‒ Make it right, puzzle over it a little longer, don’t rush To fill in the last blanks. Well, here’s the beast; The game’s nearly done. What’s the matter? ‒ Don’t get upset that it’s a lion. It could have been a hare, Or an elephant like a gray mountain, And you got a lion, you did a good job. No one’s to blame That your childhood fell during wartime, that the century’s That dark thoughts came in the night to overpower you, That this menacing lion never befriended the little billy. Yet think: the King of the Beasts! There are things You understood better than those who made a duckling. Burning hot jaws breathed in your face, That you were handed a tough country,

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