At a brisk pace like a pine marten, in a brown wrapper
he brings his friends in the coffeeshop momentary glimpses,
leather volumes, clippings in a portfolio and in the bag
he also brought from town some cream and cottage cheese.

In a passport issued using some czar-era papers
is a birthdate which has not caused any stir for a long time
While he puttered around the greenhouse the regimes got mixed up
It’s just too bad that he so seldom can go home to Räpina.

Mr. Ahven, we haven’t any news for you.
You’ve known all our wants and fears a while now anyway.
And if there’s really something else, I’ll call and say so.
But I don’t know, is the telephone connected in the Milky Way?

Lembit yesterday gave me his poetry book
He left it on the kitchen table, he himself was dead,
He could have given it away to anybody else
but he left it for me, because perhaps he knew me.

Of griefs and loves out to the horizon’s edge
a life’s poetry written into that faded diary.
It’s amazing, that some people can go like that,
without ever quite leaving completely.