Every store keeps a book for complaints
And, if you ask for it, they have to give it to you!
It wouldn’t be a bad idea, I think,
If eternity had a book like that.
Then people wouldn’t have to keep silent about their sorrow.
…Timidly, cautious at first, they would all come, bringing
The griefs they endure, the wrongs they are made to suffer
To universal attention and judgement.
How we should then be struck, I know,
By one entry of half a line
written
By that woman who, slumped against its railings,
Was crying in the park last night…
.
by Евгений Михайлович Винокуров (Yevgeny Mikhailovich Vinokurov)
(1961)
Translated by Albert C. Todd
Additional information: He served in the artillery during the Second World War, studied at the Gorky Literary Institute and published his first poems in 1948. As co-editor of the poetry section of the journal Октябрь (October) he published Boris Slutsky, Nikolai Zabolotsky and the young Bella Akhmadulina amongst many others.
Beneath is the original Russian version of the poem in Cyrillic.
.
Книга жалоб – в каждом магазине…
Книга жалоб – в каждом магазине,
Требуйте её, – должны подать!..
Предлагаю вечности: отныне
Завести подобную тетрадь,
Чтоб о боли люди не молчали,
И тогда-то на вселенский суд
Все свои обиды и печали
Люди осторожно понесут…
Как тогда б, я знаю, поразила
Надпись в полстроки из-под пера
Женщины, что павши на перила,
Ночью в парке плакала вчера.
1961
Rambling At The Bridge Head 