Анета 1995
Translated by Larisa Schultz ©
ANETA
Good news is hard to come by, bad news travels fast - Aneta is in love.
The lodgers have been whispering since the break of day, and eyes are all askance.
None could have heard of it first-hand, and none has heard, but things are clear to all -
In love, indeed. Well, isn't that too bad? Besides, the fog from early on.
The next door flutist burnt the pieces of his flute - Aneta is in love.
Who needs this "Turkish March" today, what sense is there now in the treble clef?
He's pulled the thing out of the suede, pressed somewhat harder - and the flute is gone.
A slender maple once, a craftsman's labour - all just ashes, ashes now.
It's such a complicated day today - wreaths, mourning, carriages, the knell.
The tyrant's dead, the city weeps and cries for him - Aneta is in love.
Why God should choose this one for me to have been born in... What a place, I say!
The seventh corpse in seven years, they should be used to it, but still they cry.
Come in, dear stranger, be my guest, sit down, I'll have a wine-jug brought for us.
We've got a real-life circus here, you'll simply laugh - Aneta is in love.
There's not much hope that she'll address me by my given name while I am here.
Still lesser chance for that to happen in that place where soon I'll be, alas.
Oh well - a complex day, the army, wreaths, the fog unlike a year ago.
At least the flute was somewhere whistling then, today instead there's just the knell.
Look at my birds - they're petrified within their cages, making not a sound.
You ask me who's a thrush, a finch, but now I cannot tell you which is which.
I'm sad and nothing interests me anymore - Aneta is in love.
Take any one of these two glasses, they're the best, but meanwhile drink alone.
No taste in wine, the fog is thick, the capital keeps mourning on and on.
Rue not Aneta, but the flute, though what's a flute - an ex-tree, after all.