it was an unbearably dry fall
our thoughts did not remember the streets
they wandered the day before
neighbors with heavy eyelids
left very early
not returning for weeks
I fed their animals
understanding neither the language nor the looks
we lived in adjoining rooms
but every day you said
you never saw me
that you heard something about salt lakes,
exhausted shores
but you’d never seen them
you sipped your tea so loud
I could hear it in the yard
in the evening you looked through the photos
that I collected in empty homes
and labeled each—
names, dates, locations
you took them to your room
you said that you had to find a place for them all on your walls
you said that it would take a lot of time
a lot of time
I didn’t ask how much exactly
but I imagined, more or less, our old age
sometimes you said goodnight
I understood that it was not for me
you’d leave me at such times
with no answers
occasionally you left your door open
and then I’d tell myself that tonight I was welcome
and then your eyes looked up
but not at me
but that was enough
I always left when it was still dark
not to startle you in the morning
then you’d wake up, open the door
step out of the room
and life was eternal again
***
my day aches at the root
doesn’t go into the trunk
groans across hallways and floors
bangs its forehead against the wall
clambers up to the lung-tops
until the branches wither
it’s been so long since I’ve seen any postmen and neighbors
that I’ve forgotten what it’s like
to borrow
oil, earth, and salt
to look into eyes
avoiding sharp corners
so as not to tear off another bit of love
quickly to get exhausted
from this intimacy
not touching you for weeks
young am I, young
not getting engorged with
vernal vigor
my day is tree hollows filled with voids
each is a weathered core
that admits into its circle
neither time, nor the harbingers
***
you were gone unbearably long
thirsting for weariness of being filled up
you arrive empty-handed
I see
through you
roots
close at hand
but we dodge it
and I comfort you as I can
while you impatiently push
through the dense blackthorns
and exhausted shores
paved with bushy paths
you shake your head woefully
in your wake
a freshly mown path
like a sheaf I bow down
before you
my scytheman!
not a single bird song heard anymore
nor a human voice
how swiftly you chant me
with white dew
murky tears flowing
from mountains cut up by ditches
surrounded
pour yourself out of your imprisonment
onto my will
***
all night he chased me along the field
of my pleasure
until the waves of his sorrow
subsided
drunk
with his own power
during the battle
but I would not die
like the ripped earth
or the shot tree
then he took a knife
shaved off my hips and drove in
a few nails to stretch a bow
so that I would play better
now you can’t touch me
like a terrible
barely surviving recollection
Copyright © Alex Averbuch. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2025 by Oksana Maksymchuk, Max Rosochinsky, and Alex Averbuch. All rights reserved.