Night.[1] Street.[2] Lamp.[3] Drugstore.[4]
Dull and sleazy light.[5]
Live twenty-five years more [6]--
It will be as now [7]. No way out.[8]
 
You die [9]—and again you begin.[10]
All is repeated as before:[11]
Night.[12] The canal's icy ripples.[13]
Drugstore.[14] Lamp.[15] Street.[16]

[1] Night is when the vultures prowl
[2] on our streets. They shoot
[3] the lamps with their guns & leave
[4] the drugstore empty of cotton & penicillin.

[5] A lone candle flickers inside an old woman's
[6] eye; she has seen years go by
[7] With nothing ever changing,
[8] Only the number of gravestones piling
 
[9] On top of one flower garland after another.
[10] She's next, she holds the candle.
[11] She'll pass it to her neighbor, a daughter.
[12] She now counts the stars while waiting.
 
[13] So, her mother fills a basin with tears
[14] & some soap she bought from the drugstore.
[15] This night, she hushes the lamp to sleep,
[16] An army truck takes the old woman away.
* by Alexander Blok, translated by Ilya Kaminsky.