Like flowing metal, the December sky.
Now and then a last skinny leaf falls
from the naked poplars
juxtaposed
like a black winged paw
that with a wintry sound
sinks into the snowy-brown
rotting earth.
Through the prism of endless melting
no trace of a path shows
no trace of a horizon.
Just Matteus the war invalid
with his rickety sticklike legs
like stumps in a felled woods
travelling step by step
in his own “bond” with
the tethered tatty donkey
and the two of them
two lost and sick nags
seeking their home in empty streets
in the vast December eve.
Translated by Miri Koral
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