Ivy
in memoriam Arseny Tarkovsky
Like ivy-tendrilled walls, I'm overgrown
and held together by my memory.
I am because I was, that's all there is –.
I shut my eyelids and begin to see.
When every road is closed that leads outside,
my inner spaces grow, intensify.
There, arching over mountains and the steppes
a cosmic burdock-leaf hangs, it's the sky.
The sun will rise and set. In gloomy towns
long shadows roam in every alley-way.
I know them all. No living soul is more
alive, no dead one is more dead than they.
All those who talked to me will stay with me
as talk, as youth, that I'll commemorate
until my walls must tumble down beneath
an ivy-tendrilled lifetime's heavy weight.
Translated by Peter Zollman
From 'Selected Poems' by István Baka