Wind in their heads, streaks of straw-blond hair,
and ripening apples tucked deep inside baggy tops.

They don’t know how to pick their clothes.
Don’t know a thing about love and loss.

They’re awkwardly charming.

I can’t help staring at them,
as they’re humming a song out of tune,
as they’re eating their cherries and ice creams,
as they feel bored through their long afternoons,

as they laugh with delight at the weak ones,
their palms half-hiding their teeth —
they’re harmless.

They still make extra holes in their belts with an awl,
and chop off their hair with an axe.

They sit in the sun, looking lazy and calm,
one leg crossed over the other,
round knees with
half-healed pale scars.

A current hums through their young muscles.

As a flame licks
raw twigs in the hearth, so the sky
rains down fire without ash.

Yet they’re consumed by the fire and flames
of another living hell.

A coal in the mattress — their private virginity.

A black fly in the solitude of the room —
a furious buzz, out of nowhere.

Books slide down from their hands.

So wildly their hearts are pounding
that the thighs of the curtains drift open.

Those silken locks draped down their backs.
This hair chopped off with an axe.

Translated by Rosalia Ignatova