Memento

Like a reminder of this life
of trams, sun, sparrows,
and the flighty uncontrolledness
of streams leaping like thermometers,

and because ducks are quacking somewhere
above the crackling of the last, paper-thin ice,
and because children are crying bitterly
(remember children's lives are so sweet!)

and because in the drunken, shimmering starlight
the new moon whoops it up,
and a stocking crackles a bit at the knee,
gold in itself and tinged by the sun,

like a reminder of life,
and because there is resin on tree trunks,
and because I was madly mistaken
in thinking that my life was over,

like a reminder of my life -
you entered into me on stockinged feet.

You entered - neither too late nor too early
-at exactly the right time, as my very own,
and with a smile, uprooted me
from memories, as from a grave.

And I, once again whirling among
the painted horses, gladly exchange,
for one reminder of life,
all its memories.

1974
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Translated by Arthur Boyars amd Simon Franklin