This tree is still crying with tar ...
  Although long it has served
for a window -
 as a frame
on a big old veranda ...

It still cries
  remembering those happy green years
 when it was blissfully growing 
together 
 with other young trees
  in a fary-tale forest,
their branches going to Heaven
  and singing
Hymns of the Beatitudes to it ...


It still cries,
 'cause the veranda is gone,
   there's no house either ...

And those who inhabited it
 are already - in Heaven ...

It still cries 
 for the children
 who were expelled,
when their grandparents died,
 those who had built that great house... 

  It's still crying 
    for it remembers that house,
a permanent bulwark of love and reliance ...


It still cries
  remembering
things that will never come back ...
  That veranda, the blinds -
they could fold
  if you pulled on the thread ...
The rocking  arm chair
  where the children could sway
running away from the piano
  when they were tired of playing the scales.
Remembers the furniture -
  a neat-handed master had made it
using thin straw.
 Remembers the carved sideboards, chests of draws
and diamond-shaped casement glass bookcases,
 when books were still dear ...
  Remembers those tablecloths and curtains
that the little girl's grandmother embroidered in satin-stitch ...

Granny, where are you, dear?
   You know that your daughter, your first elder daughter,
threw the little girl out 
  when her father had perished,
her father, your baby, your dear younger son?
 She wanted to keep the whole house for herself ...
But ... it didn't pan out ...

The house was pulled down by the city
   spreding 
and spreading that far...

What has remained?
   Only the memory ...

It's the memory that is still crying with tar ...
  And the tar's getting frozen
and no longer rolls down like a tear,
  but turns
all the memories into a ball of magic
  saving everything ...

Nobody will understand
 except for Heaven,
if only those children
  that were expelled,
will write a novel
  called "House" or "Home" ...

Who will live in this house and home
 in the Perfect Invisible World?


November 7, 2021



                                      *          *           *


Again I return to this house,
  which is no longer ...
I come back as that happy little girl -
  she doesn't even know 
what is in store for her ...


But Time can't be stopped...

Time didn't freeze 
  when those who had built that miraculous house were gone...

Time didn't freeze 
  when the aunt
   kicked the little girl out,
the daughter
 of her deceased
younger brother -
  she was only eleven years old ...


Time did not freeze
  when that house was torn into pieces ...

Time will never be frozen -
  just onward and on.

But ...
   Somewhere
there is no Time, 
   only Perfection and Joy,
we shall live in that House of Timeless Holiness ...

There we'll have celebrations -
  all the slain ones
all the unborn,
  all the deprived,
all the hurt,
  all the kind ones ...

There'll be Love
  that we didn't know on the Earth...
There'll be Peace...

Whatever we dreamed about here,
 whoever we loved -
  all will be There...

And the tears won't roll down the tree like some resin,
  down the tree that was cut
 and served as a window frame 
on that big old veranda ...

The tears will stay on the Earth
  freezing into transparent amber of my memory ...


November 7, 2021

My poem translated into English by me

http://lit.lib.ru/editors/s/slobodkina_o/thistreedoc.shtml