Homesickness! that long
exposed weariness!
It's all the same to me now
where I am altogether lonely

or what stones I wander over
home with a shopping bag to
a house that is no more mine
than a hospital or a barracks

It's all the same to me, captive
lion what faces I move through
bristling, or what human crowd will
cast me out as it must

into myself, into my separate internal
world, a Kamchatka bear without ice.
Where I fail to fit in (and I'm not trying) or
where I'm humiliated it's all the same.

And I won't be seduced by the thought of
my native language, its milky call.
How can it matter in what tongue I
am misunderstood by whoever I meet

(or by what readers, swallowing
newsprint, squeezing for gossip?)
They all belong to the twentieth
century, and I am before time,

stunned, like a log left
behind from an avenue of trees.
People are all the same to me, everything
is the same, and it may be the most

indifferent of all are these
signs and tokens which once were
native but the dates have been
rubbed out: the soul was born somewhere.

For my country has taken so little care
of me that even the sharpest spy could
go over my whole spirit and would
detect no native stain there.

Houses are alien, churches are empty
everything is the same:
But if by the side of the path one
particular bush rises
the rowanberry...1934
(another translation of this poem)
This thing called homesickness! A fable
That was exploded long ago!
Because for me it does not matter
Where to be completely so

Alone, and with my bag from the market
To plod home on who cares what stone -
To some house (like hospital, barracks)
That doesn't know it is my own.

It doesn't matter whose - the faces,
Midst which to bristle like a pure,
Caged lion - or which human setting
To be shoved out of soon - for sure -

Into myself and my own feelings
(Kamchatka bear without his ice).
It's all the same: where not to get on?
Or where not to be treated nice?

And this about one's native language:
I'll not be fooled... though it's milk-sweet.
Who cares which mother-tongue is spoken
If not understood by those you meet!

(By readers, by the gossip milkers,
By those who gulp each paper's word ...)
They're of this century, the twentieth,
And I - ere centuries occurred!

Having grown wooden like an old log
Remaining here from some park lane.
Each person, every thing's the same thing,
And that, perhaps, which seems again

More same than all else was the dearest:
All marks, all dates, all signs of me -
Vanish as by hand-flicking magic:
A sour born - somewhere: that simply.

My native land did not sustain me
Enough so that on all my soul
Even the most thorough detective
Could find a birthmark or a mole!

Each house is strange; each church means nothing.
It's all one and the same to me.
But if a bush looms by my pathway ,
Especially a rowan tree...

Kamchatka is in Siberia.