from Twenty-Eight Variations o Chuvash and Udmurt Folk Songs Poem by Gennadiy Aygi

XIX
And in the fog
the green oak
has nothing stronger than a branch
to sing with

XX
These hands and this head
will remain with those who died in a foreign land—
smoke from the locomotive hits us in the face,
to rob us of memory once and for all.

XXI
And suddenly—peace, as if
I were alone in the world,
and the blizzard out the window, blizzard in the garden,
blizzard in the fields.

XXII
And the day fell silent, like something
meaningful in it had died,
and the fox sleeps in the foothills,
covered by its red tail.

XXIII
Between the Kazakh and Chuvash lands
did you see the post that marks the boundary line?
It is not a post; it is I standing there, petrified
from sadness.