You will hear thunder and remember me,
It is not just, to be stingy with your spirit!
Think then upon wanton storms
The rim of the sky spoke to you
With her hard crimson sails
Your heart on fire, we’ve all
Seemed to ourselves, as if in a dream
Our lives an accidental guest
If the world were music
How our bodies would brighten up –
My shadow it must then, serve
As the friend I crave, on such nights
Where memory must be slaughtered
For tomorrow’s warmth, with a still
Beating breast, the carnival of life keeps
Still, seeming like someone’s delirium
Or a reflection in somebody else’s mirror
I’ve lived without a name, my destiny
Haunted by incompletion, I’ve been
Touched by grief, as the future that ripens
In the past, I’d rather not recall just now
Forgive me, I’ve managed badly to
Console you, I’ve left only traces
Of myself in songs, Russian can lip these –
The voice so wild and simple
As to be untranslatable into any one tongue
We learned not to meet anymore
Our youthful dreams in starry words
That chill, at the bottom of hope whiter than chalk
Where the rosy limbs of youthful idealism
Must take root in new minds, favourite hours
That are no longer mine, but yours
I will not condemn you to repeat my mistakes
Though you will, without spilling your blood
Too much, you may not know the wild honey
Smells of freedom, or how the dust fled from sunlight
But then again, I do not wish too much
Revolution in your times, or dying friends;
As for me, you will hear thunder and remember these
And think: “she wanted beautiful storms.”
Wuji Seshat 