Autumn in Sigulda

Hanging out of the train, I

Bid you all good-bye.

Good-bye, Summer:

My time is up.

Axes knock at the dacha

As they board it up:

Good-bye.

The woods have shed their leaves,

Empty and sad today

As an accordion case that grieves

When its music is taken away.

People (meaning us)

Are also empty,

As we leave behind

(We have no choice)

Walls, mothers, womankind:

So it has always been and will be.

Good-bye, Mother,

Standing at the window

Transparent as a cocoon: soon

You will know how tired you are.

Let us sit here a bit.

Friends and foes, adieu,

Good-bye.

The whistle has blown: it is time

For you to run out of me and I

Out of you.

Motherland, good-bye now.

I shall not whimper nor make a scene,

But be a star, a willow:

Thank you, Life, for having been.

In the shooting gallery,

Where the top score is ten,

I tried to reach a century:

Thank you for letting me make the mistake,

But a triple thank-you that into

My transparent shoulders

Genius drove

Like a red male fist that enters

A rubber glove.

Voznesensky may one day be graven

In cold stone but, meanwhile, may

I find haven

On your warm cheek as Andrei.

In the woods the leaves were already falling

When you ran into me, asked me something.

Your dog was with you: you tugged at his leash and called him,

He tugged the other way:

Thank you for that day.

I came alive: thank you for that September,

For explaining me to myself. The housekeeper, I remember,

Woke us at eight, and on weekends her phonograph sang

Some old underworld song

In a hoarse bass:

I give thanks for the time, the place.

But you are leaving, going,

As the train is going, leaving,

Going in another direction: we are ceasing to belong

to each other or this house. What is wrong?

Near to me, I say:

Yet Siberias away!

I know we shall live again as

Friends or girlfriends or blades of grass,

Instead of us this one or that one will come:

Nature abhors a vacuum.

The leaves are swept away without trace

But millions more will grow in their place:

Thank you, Nature, for the laws you gave me.

But a woman runs down the track

like a red autumn leaf at the train’s back.

Save me!

Andrei Voznesensky

(Translated by W. H. Auden)