Balakirev's Dream

1905

The black grand piano, the gleaming spider,
stood trembling in the middle of its web of music.

In the concert hall a land took shape
where the stones were no heavier than dew.

But Balakirev fell asleep during the music
and dreamed a dream about the tsar’s carriage.

It rolled along over the cobblestones
straight into the crow-cawing darkness.

He sat alone inside the carriage and looked out,
but at the same time ran beside it in the road.

He knew the journey had been long
and his watch showed years, not hours.

There was a field where the plow lay
and the plow was a bird that had fallen from the sky.

There was a bay where a ship lay
icebound, lights out, with people on deck.

The carriage glided across the ice, its wheels
spinning and spinning with a silky sound.

A small warship: Sevastopol.
He was aboard. The crew gathered ‘round.

“You’ll be spared if you can play.”
They showed him a strange instrument.

It resembled a tuba, or a phonograph,
or part of some unknown machine.

Numb with fear and helpless, he knew: this was
the instrument that drove the warship.

He turned to the nearest sailor,
gestured desperately and pleaded:

“Make the sign of the cross like me, make the sign of the cross!”
The sailor stared blankly, like a blind man,

stretched his arms out, his head bowed—
he hung as though nailed fast in the air.

The drums beat. The drums beat. Applause!
Balakirev woke from his dream.

The wings of applause fluttered across the hall.
He watched the man at the grand piano rise.

Outside the streets lay darkened by the strike.
The carriages rolled swiftly through the darkness.

_{Translator’s note:}

_{Title in reference to the Russian composer Mily Balakirev (1837-1910). The date 1905 places the dream in the year of the First Russian Revolution.}

From Hemligheter på vägen (Secrets on the Way), 1958