Marjana Gaponenko
Children
We were children dangling happily from branches. The heavens above beckoned with treasures and we sharpened our wooden daggers to reach them. We fought bravely against invisible enemies, caught butterflies and little birds, in order to release them ceremoniously, we laughed at lovers kissing, chased strangers, brought kittens back to their mothers, cried bitterly, if only briefly.
We were docile wolfs among wolfs more docile than us. Like a golden ball our laughing blue-eyed time echoed and rolled through the woods, our woods, and we, running head over heels, ran after it. Suddenly it was gone, it got lost among the flowers, lost in the wild grasses, melted away leaving us standing where we still stand today, caught while kneeling down with eyes wide open and hair blowing, almost stumbling.
Translated by Gunhild Muschenheim