Tomorrow's Wind

Why am I without joy,
                     achieving everything,
but grasping
            nothing at all?
I dream of the wind
                   that has overtaken me,
the wind
        that has leaped over me.
It shreds
         all the telephone lines that sag
from unending chatter,
and all that’s wasted,
                      all that’s turned sour
it catapults
            into oblivion.
All sorts of butwhatifers,
shaking,
        like jelly in jackets,
whirled up in a vortex,
                       like fallen leaves,
shout down indignantly:
                       "How come?"
Where there’s no wind,
                      there’s no faith.
Let clammy red pencils
                      be strewn
among the reeds,
                scattered madly
by tomorrow’s wind.
Wind
    does not crawl
                  before idols,
it swirls scraps
                of newspapers and posters,
yesterday’s glories,
                    turning somersaults
over warped roofs.
As if it had swilled
                    the Decembrists’ hot punch,
tipsy,
      the wind flings upward
all the important little papers
that press us down
                  to the ground.
The wind
        showers
               under constellations
the garbage
           in which the world is bogged down:
automobiles,
            which have ridden over people,
furniture,
          which has sprawled on us.
The wind
        pulls away from sticky screens
all the bewitched
                 simpletons and fools,

and without thinking
                    plants them
                               like shashlik
on the spike of their beloved TV tower...
Timid youth,
            I am preaching to you:
Charge forward,
               headlong into the epoch,
without wasting
               the wind of history
either on fads
              or the flimsy.
Each
    new generation
must create
           a special wind.
If it doesn’t shake
                   bits of dust,
young people
            should send
                       an SOS.
Youth
     is the age for a fresh airing.
In old age
          it’s harder to be precocious,
if you put off
              being young
in your youth.
Is it possible for you
                      all to be unfit?
Suck in the time
                with a feverous mouth.
The calm will be
                inhaled by you,
by the wind
           exhaled
                  afterward.
And the wind,
             making a gift of itself
                                    to the universe,
is born,
        sprawling
                 in a burst,
and structures
              built on sand
rightfully will crumble.
And I, having reared
                    these structures not a little,
will look on happily,
                     blaming no one,
as it withdraws,
                arching its mane,
the wind
        that has leaped over me.

1977
Translated by Albert C. Todd