Forgotten Faces
Forgotten faces,
faces on streets –
I touch them,
set them aglow.
Are these the faces of people
I have forgotten?
An old man stands leaning
against a wall.
So he stood
with his shrunken,
all-knowing lips
when Socrates was preaching
in the marketplace in Athens.
A woman passes me by
with a red umbrella –
so did she flame by me
in a rain
in the city of Kazan.
A man looks at me
with freckles on his face –
O faces, forgotten,
faces in a dream.
Translated by Barnett Zumoff
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