it's 1962 March 28thI'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train night is fallingI never knew I likednight descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain I don't likecomparing nightfall to a tired birdI didn't know I loved the earthcan someone who hasn't worked the earth love it I've never worked the earthit must be my only Platonic loveand here I've loved rivers all this timewhether motionless like this they curl skirting the
European hills crowned with chateausor whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can seeI know you can't wash in the same river even onceI know the river will bring new lights you'll never seeI know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly as long as a crowI know this has troubled people before and will trouble those after meI know all this has been said a thousand times before and will be said after meI didn't know I loved the sky cloudy or clearthe blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodinoin prison I translated both volumes of War and Peace into Turkish I hear voicesnot from the blue vault but from the yard the guards are beating someone againI didn't know I loved treesbare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkinothey come upon me in winter noble and modest beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish "the poplars of Izmirlosing their leaves. . .they call me The Knife. . . lover like a young tree. . .
I blow stately mansions sky-high"in the Ilgaz woods in 1920 I tied an embroidered linen handkerchief to a pine bough for luckI never knew I loved roads even the asphalt
Vera's behind the wheel we're driving from Moscow to the Crimea Koktebele formerly "Goktepé ili" in Turkish the two of us inside a closed boxthe world flows past on both sides distant and mute I was never so close to anyone in my lifebandits stopped me on the red road between Bolu and Geredé when I was eighteenapart from my life I didn't have anything in the wagon they could take and at eighteen our lives are what we value leastI've written this somewhere beforewading through a dark muddy street I'm going to the shadow play Ramazan nighta paper lantern leading the waymaybe nothing like this ever happenedmaybe I read it somewhere an eight-year-old boy going to the shadow
Ramazan night in Istanbul holding his grandfather's hand his grandfather has on a fez and is wearing the fur coat with a sable collar over his robe and there's a lantern in the servant's hand and I can't contain myself for joyflowers come to mind for some reason poppies cactuses jonquilsin the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika fresh almonds on her breathI was seventeenmy heart on a swing touched the sky I didn't know I loved flowersfriends sent me three red carnations in prisonI just remembered the stars I love them toowhether I'm floored watching them from below or whether I'm flying at their sideI have some questions for the cosmonauts were the stars much biggerdid they look like huge jewels on black velvet or apricots on orangedid you feel proud to get closer to the starsI saw color photos of the cosmos in Ogonek magazine now don't be upset comrades but nonfigurative shall we say or abstract well some of them looked just like such paintings which is to say they were terribly figurative and concretemy heart was in my mouth looking at them they are our endless desire to grasp thingsseeing them I could even think of death and not feel at all sad I never knew I loved the cosmossnow flashes in front of my eyesboth heavy wet steady snow and the dry whirling kind I didn't know I liked snowI never knew I loved the suneven when setting cherry-red as nowin Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors but you aren't about to paint it that wayI didn't know I loved the sea except the Sea of Azovor how muchI didn't know I loved cloudswhether I'm under or up above themwhether they look like giants or shaggy white beastsmoonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois strikes meI like itI didn't know I liked rainwhether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop and takes off for uncharted countries I didn't know I loved rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin trainis it because I lit my sixth cigarette one alone could kill meis it because I'm half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscowher hair straw-blond eyelashes bluethe train plunges on through the pitch-black nightI never knew I liked the night pitch-blacksparks fly from the engineI didn't know I loved sparksI didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return 19 April 1962 Moscow Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993)
