The Census of Leaves

Autumn hung red flags
On slender branches above an empty yard.
The city awoke and looked through its papers:
Everything had already been written down yesterday.

Leaves fall into transparent ballot boxes.
The wind counts them, falters, swirls —
Everyone has long been given their own square,
Someone had already counted the results before them.

Copper has fallen silent in autumn pockets,
The ringing dissolves into an invisible network.
Numbers slide across cold screens,
Remembering us more carefully than we remember ourselves.

In the workshop, the clocks continue working.
The master arrives, as usual, at seven.
Money turns into late autumn leaves —
By morning, there is less of it in an open palm.

At night, summer is born above the warehouse
For a few long, fiery minutes.
By morning, the brick walls have turned black,
And cars move along the road.

Cars lie cooling by the roadside,
Dark windows staring at the highway.
Someone boards up a shopfront,
Taking down the sign from the door for the last time.

Someone walks away along the wet road.
The forest accepts them and hides their tracks.
All night the wind takes the road apart,
By morning forgetting who had passed this way.

No one tears the song from the stage —
The lights have simply been turned down.
The hall remains, and the audience is the same.
Only the singer, somehow, is no longer there.

A word flies like the last leaves.
The wind carries it beyond the fence.
Afterwards, there will be walls and numbers.
Afterwards — four walls. A corridor.

In the east, iron darkens.
The sky is etched with a web of trails.
By evening, someone's name from yesterday
Will become a line among several words.

If they order a person to break away,
Like a leaf on frozen ground,
Will the roots be strong enough to hold?
Will there be enough of a voice in this winter?

While there is still a path beneath our feet,
While a voice can still be heard through the fog,
Someone carries it, shielding it with their hands —
A coal that has not yet gone cold in the ashes.

Autumn will pass. This winter will be long.
Snow will cover names and tracks.
Only beneath the snow, beneath the old rowan tree,
The roots will wait for the movement of water.

Author: Dmitry Lyubishkin