Poplars

Anzhelina Polonskaya (translated by Andrew Wachtel)

Farewell. Don’t go far.
Your glance falls silent.
The poplars are transparent, forget even themselves.
The ocean of your freedom’s the shore of my expectation.
Poplars rustle in the spring. Don’t trust them.
Freedom’s not here, not in this world, and the four winds
scatter the song about missing each other in the future.
The die is cast, the deck is stacked, but even so
the wolves are fed and the holy lambs untouched.
So, what’s wrong with our farewells
when parting is certain?
Apart, you and I will forget the song,
and our voices will melt like shadows,
where everything is fated, and nothing has meaning.

Anzhelina Polonskaya has published translations in many of the leading world poetry journals, including The Iowa Review, Agni, Image, The Massachusetts Review, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, Witness. etc.