A Stranger Lives My Life And Wears My Body
By Vasyl Stus
A stranger lives my life and wears my body—
it starts to seem—he spends my years on earth
instead of me.
I have no eyes and ears,
no mouth, no hands and feet. I am estranged
inside my body, and—a lump of pain—
I hover, shut-in-self, in total darkness.
At birth, your psyche ended up stark naked:
you failed to graft together with your body.
You did not manage to attain your flesh.
A passerby who transits interworlds—
you stir, forgotten, at the very bottom
of someone else’s self.
A hundred nights
await you, and a hundred nights have died.
You hover in between—a voiceless doll,
white-hot from self-inflicted scorching pain:
a speck of hell, the Universe’s scream—
laconic and intense, devoid of exits…
A shotgun pellet of the sun—you roamed
and lost your bearings in this foreign body.
You are still waiting for your birth—however,
death entered your existence long ago.
