Rain
Rain
“It’s raining,
and still people say there’s no God!”
So Granny Varya,
an old woman from near us, would say.
Now the people who said there was no God
are lighting candles in churches,
ordering masses for the dead,
shunning those of other faiths.
Granny Varya lies in her grave,
and the rain pours on,
immense, abundant, relentless,
on and on,
aiming at no-one in particular.
Olga Sedakova (b.1949)
Translated by Catriona Kelly
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