Forever started late in February. Forever’s already been going on for several months. For forever, it’s a vanishingly short term Someone will be born in half a century and again in twenty or twenty five years. From his elders’ stories, he’ll realize Forever lasts seventy years or more. He will ask, “Is this forever?” Nothing is forever, my young, far-away friend. Not even the Sun, not even the Universe Some day, forever will end, as more than one or two forevers have, Even I, a mere mortal, have managed to see the five-pointed forever scattering into hundreds of fragments. And anyone may fancy that there never was forever, Only love, hope and joy, fleeting Illusory, and everlasting all at the same time. And today, heartily, each of us blesses the stars for the life we’ve lived through, A life which has become undoubtedly happy Against the newly-born forever.
Be damned this war. We’ve never lived so well. So happily. Because there is no future. It’s bled us dry after this hundred years. The future did this in its own splendid name. And we’d been paying tribute to this future. It’s ceased to set, has not come true at all. It might have helped us live, dream of tomorrow, But for the war. And now we simply try to seize the day. Just here and now, because there’s no tomorrow. We wouldn’t get to learn what it’s to live But for the war.
Translated by Eugenia Kolodina