Читать книгу In Praise of Poetry - Ольга Седакова - Страница 29

8. THE MIRROR

My dearest one, even I do not know

Why such things exist:

a mirror hovers nearby

no bigger than a lentil

or a grain of millet.

But what burns and flickers within it,

what looks out, flares, and fades—

better not to see that at all.

Life, after all—is a not a very large thing:

all of it, every bit, can gather itself up

on the tip of a finger, the end of an eyelash.

And death spreads all around it, a vast sea.