The full text of the poem:

BURDEN¹

by Liubov Sirota

Translated from the Russian by Leonid Levin and Elisavietta Ritchie

How amazing
in my thirtieth year
not to live
but instead
stumble along–
all bygone years
both happy and deadly,
heavy, wet, like logs,
crowd in the soul
as if in a tomb!

The soul does not sing
but rather becomes mute;
ails
rather than aches . . .
So it is harder to breathe.

I am not to fly!
Though the shallow edge
of heaven is over my porch.
Already the roads have tired me,
hobbled me so–
I can no longer soar!

Faces reflect in the heavens.
faces of those
to whom I have said farewell.
Not one can be forgotten!
No oblivion!

The soul, it seems–
is a difficult memory.
Nothing can be erased,
nothing subtracted,
nothing canceled,
nothing corrected! . . .

. . . Even so,–the burden is sacred,
the heavier
the dearer!