“i would search everywhere / just to hear your call / and walk upon stranger roads than this one”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday:

An Attempt at Consolation, Yuri Levitanskiy, tr. by med_cat

More and more inevitably, more and more often, as the years pass,
I keep getting a peculiar feeling,
As if I were leafing through those pages not for the first time,
As if I had read this book once before.

It seems to me more and more often, as the years pass,
And the conviction grows decisively stronger:
I have had to touch these yellowed pages with my hands
Once before, indubitably.

And I say to you, “Listen, oh, don’t be sad,
Don’t grieve immeasurably for your loss,
For I recall, that somewhere around page five
You will anyway find consolation.”

I say to you: “You shouldn’t torment yourself so,
Oh, wait—you will see, everything will be all right.
For I remember, that ten pages or so later
You are humming some merry tune.”

I say to you: “Don’t wring your hands,
Although the world seems oppressive today.
For I remember, that somewhere around page one hundred
You are smiling, as if nothing had happened.”

And even to myself I say—it’s all right, don’t be sad.
And even myself I console with this—don’t cry, it will be all right.
And even to myself I repeat—all this has happened before,
It happened, it took place, but it has passed, and everything is all right.

I say to myself—there will be pages more bitter than this,
There will be lines that are the most bitter, the final lines,
So as to cause one to be sad, so as to cause one to wring one’s hands—
but even all that is only until page number so-and-so.

(Original here)

---L.

Subject quote from Afterglow, Genesis.