1
so that I
in myself should pray,
You
are not filled for me — with prayer,
and in evident powerful
absence
I am ringed, encircled.
2

But in her
the child — I cannot
pray. She is in herself
a prayer. You, in this quiet circle
Yourself
are utterly
in Yourself.
3

What am I
in the Silence — as in steady Light?
Or in fire. But the sick trees' frozen equality is living. And You,
next to this —
are clarity, — oh, impenetrable clarity. Compared to it
death is a promise... — is something other!.. And in a dead circle
unendurably
falls from a tree — a leaf.

1984
Translated from Russian by Peter France