Natalya Gorbanevskaya
This, from the diagnosis
“The children’s fate doesn’t bother her.”
This, from the diagnosis,
rings out like a silvery clarinet,
has lost the colour of danger,
but my memory’s not been wiped clean of it.
It’s good when the breathing in the next room
is my sons’ and not a cell-mate’s;
it’s good to wake up, not groaning
at an envenomed reality.
It’s good not to feel the brain’s convolutions –
has there been a change? – is it yourself, isn’t it? –
not settling down to breathe in, from underneath the rubble
the dust of what, please God, is irrecoverable.
Translated by Daniel Weissbort
Page(s) 67
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