Evening after Work

The workshop is empty;
how vast it is!
I alone stayed behind…
The silence here is commanding.
Heat lightly hovers
at the forge.
A ray of twilight hangs
from the window.
There, beyond the dusty glass,
the air is soft and clean…
The shine of the rising stars
is silver.
The silence is so absolute,
as if one could hear a hissing.
Night is slinking. Deeper, darker…
The stars’ fires are so distant, secretly radiant.
I will wait, I will wait…
So frightfully quiet is the hush…
Life with the day’s passing has not been expended —
her breath gently flows…
The engines’ shadows are static, grim.
I see in them death’s attire.
The workshop is void…
The ember beneath the ash, fading, lives on loss.

Translated from Part I of Andrei Platonov’s book of poems, Blue Depths.

Location: Voronezh, Voronezh Oblast, Russia

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