[“On the embankment…”]

Konstantin Vaginov again. Probably written in the early 1930s in Leningrad.

On the embankment, a dawn,
Lilac and vague.
Balding children are sitting
On a magnificent summit.

Perhaps it’s a gleam from the windows
That‘s lighting their shoulders and chest,
But pale as a leaf is the sky,
And music does not play.

UPDATE. I don’t think “gleam of (or from the) windows” is the best word choice for otblesk okon, which I suppose means the light of the dawn or the rising sun reflected by windows of the building(s) opposite the one on whose roof the “children” are perched. Suggestions welcome.

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