Cricket

    Ivan Canev


     
    Your tune trickles on as it has always done,
    and along the July cart-tracks, thought the chapped grass
    your unnamed path cuts across the yellow stubble-fields
    (and who knows where it leads).
    Seeds and clods trip you, but absorbed in yourself,
    you play for summer's banquet. And each evening my sated soul
    is lifted on high by your fixed song, before falling sound asleep.
    But in your orphans's dress, sewn from dusk and dew,
    why do you live always in the dark, hidden from all people's eyes?
    in your unpitying, helpless voice.
    - I can't stand words. As soon as you're asleep in your bed,
    I exit the night... I listen to its moments ring.
    And everything I see through the slits of the stars,
    day slashes with a golden scythe.
    Translated by G.Belev and L.Sapinkopf

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