Colours

When your face

Appeared over my crumpled life

At first I understood

Only the poverty of what I have

Then its particular light

On woods, on rivers, on the sea

Became my beginning in the coloured world,

In which I had not yet had my beginning

I am so frightened, I am so frightened

Of the unexpected sunrise finishing

Of revelations

And tears and the excitement finishing

I don’t fight it, my love is this fear,

I nourish it who can nourish nothing,

Love’s slipshod watchman

Fear hems me in.

I am conscious that these minutes are short

And that the colours in my eyes will vanish

When your face sets.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko