| From the book The Wild Rose | Legends and Fantasies
(1976 - 1978) |  |
Twelfth Legend
Sergey Radonezhsky | No one was left:
neither the boy looking at the water,
when the other boys were playing,
who saw strange plants
which were approached by names
like the smoke on Sundays:
fig, olive, palms,
nor the young man who was like hearing
and walked and walked outstripping the request,
nor the man, sharing his last bit of bread
with the bear, and putting up walls
on that hill, which was fulfilled like a dream...
nor the elder, about whom they said
that the angels conversed with him.
So, no one was left.
Neither the mentor of monks,
the teacher of the land that grew up,
nor the future, before which we will lay
down our heavy deeds and will say:
we won’t dare, but you intercede
for us. The soul is like
a broad circle of those looking at the event:
it goes on, it is still in tears,
and in first happiness, looking for happiness,
it is going away. It is like a flower.
Who will not pluck it, unless it’s you,
to your flowers, which are kneeling?
Intercede for us.
But at this late hour no one is left now.
There was a coniferous forest, ferns and horsetails,
and a bird’s cry, and bitter bushes,
and wooden air like a torch
burning for over ten days.
There someone was walking and thought of the path.
But suddenly he couldn’t help bowing
to that which was realised in his heart.
And he, who was not left there any longer,
who was already foul weather, the coniferous forest,
the shaking and expectant air,
who was a deep, sincere storehouse
of the mysterious northern wheat –
calmly bent down on his knees
before bowing
and could still be seen
from afar and everywhere and within. | | Richard McKane | |
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