Valery Kourinsky

02.20.99

OLD-TIMER'S SONG

 

Old-timer here remembers city habits,
their simple sense and company of songs
in those cafe, where there was a light,
which was by poetry and future generated.

Oldtimer knows aroma of the smiles
that raised in evening so akin to moon,
to crescent breathing joyously to us,
as if to giant there belongs in heaven.

Then there was strangers in the night, and strangers
drawled by the day and strolling like the thoughts,
personified in our sweet slowness and
in sanctuary of hopes, of height and of foreseeing.

And sadness was still of refreshing meaning,
tears were starlikely entertaining us
pour by the eyes, in which too much of joy,
too much of youth so firstly selfexpressed.

The evenings full of it of its, and holy presence
of love presentiments, of something very great,
of a fairy-tale that else was never told,
of best steps tapping during late returns...

How many sparrows then were nightingales,
how ancient Egypt was there still alive,
how houses sang by opening of windows,
how hours widened oceanlike through times.

Today we vainly seek the past in future,
today the day is full of those days
which so were aiming to unknown line,
to the horizon that now is not onward.