1962, March 28
I sit by the window of the Prague–Berlin train
night is falling
I never knew I liked
the night falling like a tired bird on a damp misty plateau
I don’t want
to compare the fall of evening to the tired bird
I didn’t know I loved the earth
can one love it without having worked it?
I have never worked the earth
this must be my first and only platonic love
and here I’ve loved the rivers all this time
whether sluggish like this one, winding along the hills
the European hills crowned with castles
or stretching out flat as far as the eye can see
I know you can’t bathe in the same river twice
I know the river will bring new light you’ll never see
I know we live only a little longer than a horse, though not nearly as long as a crow
I know this has troubled people before
and it will trouble them after me
I know all this has been said a thousand times before
and will be said after me
I didn’t know I loved the sky
clouded or clear
the blue stick Andrei studied on its back in Borodino
in prison I translated into Turkish two volumes of War and Peace
I hear voices
not from the blue stick but from the yard
the guards were beating someone again
I didn’t know I loved the trees
the bare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkino
in winter they seem noble and simple to me
beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish
“the poplars of Izmir
that shed their leaves:
they called me a knife
a lover like young wood…
I sighed heavily in very tall apartments
in the Ilgaz forest in 1920 I tied a linen embroidered scarf
to a pine branch for luck
I never knew I loved the roads
even the asphalt ones
Vera is behind the wheels we’re driving from Moscow to Crimea
Koktebel
once “Goktepe ili” in Turkish
the two of us in a closed box
the world flows by on both distant and mute sides
never in my life had I been so close to anyone
bandits stopped me on the red road between Bolu and Geredé
when I was eighteen
besides my life there was nothing in the carriage they could take
and at eighteen our lives are the least we value
I’ve written this somewhere before
long-legged through dark muddy streets I’m going to a shady place
Ramadan night
a paper lantern lights my way
perhaps nothing like this ever happened
perhaps I read this somewhere—a boy of eight
going to the shady place
on a Ramadan night in Istanbul holding his grandfather’s hand
his grandfather wore a fez and a fur coat
with a marten collar over his robe
and the lantern was in the servant’s hand
… and I couldn’t contain my joy
flowers came to my mind for some reason
poppies, cactuses, almond blossoms
in the almond garden in Kadikoy I kissed Marika
fresh almonds in her breath
I was seventeen
my heart, trembling, touched the sky
I didn’t know I loved flowers
friends sent me three red carnations in prison
just now I remembered the stars
I love them too
whether lying down and watching them from below
or flying alongside them
I have some questions for the cosmonauts
are the stars much bigger
do they look like great pearls on black velvet
or apricots in orange paint
do you feel proud coming closer to the stars
I saw color photos of the cosmos in Ogonek magazine just now
don’t worry my friends but can we say not imagined or abstract
well some of them looked just like such paintings that, let’s say,
were terribly imagined and concrete
my heart wasn’t in the right place when I looked at them
they were our endless desires to seize things
looking at them I could even think of death and not feel the least bit sad
I never knew I loved the cosmos
snow bursts before my eyes
like the wet even snow, like the dry swirling kind
I didn’t know I loved snow
I never knew I loved the sun
even when it sets like a red cherry as now
in Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors
but you wouldn’t do it like that
I didn’t know I loved the sea
except for the Sea of Azov
or how much I loved it
I didn’t know I loved the clouds
whether I am under or above them
whether they look like giants or ragged beasts
moonlight—the most false, clumsy, and petty bourgeois of all—
strikes me
I like that
I didn’t know I had rain in my heart
whether it falls like a fine veil or sprinkles my window
heart leaving me tangled in a web or trapped in a drop
and running away toward undiscovered places I didn’t know I loved
rain—why all of a sudden did I discover all these passions sitting
by the window of the Prague–Berlin train
is it because I lit my sixth cigarette
one alone could have killed me
is it because I’m half-dead thinking of someone again in Moscow
her flaxen-blonde hair, her blue eyelashes
the train cuts through the pitch-black night
I never knew I loved the pitch-black of night
sparks flash from the locomotive
I didn’t know I loved sparks
I didn’t know I had loved so many things and would have to wait until my sixties
to find this out sitting by the window of the Prague–Berlin train
watching the world disappear as on a road that goes and never returns.
