“I, I, I”. What a weird word!

Is that man there really I?

Can it be that mother loved such a person,

Greyish-yellow, with hair turning grey,

And omniscient as a serpent?

Can it be that the boy who used to dance

At Ostankino in the summer—

Is I, who, by each of my answers,

Inspire loathing, anger and fear

In newly hatched poets?

Can it be that the same person

Who used to throw all his boyish vivacity—

Into midnight arguments—is I,

Who have learned to be silent

And to jest when faced with tragic conversations?

Yet it’s always like this midway

On the fatal journey through life;

[You go] from one trivial cause to another,

And behold, you have lost your way in the desert,

And cannot find your own tracks.

No panther leaping in pursuit

Has driven me into my Parisian garret

And there is no Virgil standing at my shoulder.

There is only loneliness—framed in the mirror

That speaks the truth.