I keep repeating all the time

I laid a table for six…

A.Tarkovsky

I keep repeating all the time
Your poem’s line ‘I laid the table
For six,,,” — correcting in my mind
Your number: you forgot the seventh!

Unhappy there – the six of you.
Rain streams are running down your faces…
How could you – at a time like this
Forget about the seventh place here…

Your guests aren’t happy, can’t you see?
And your decanter is standing idle.
It’s sad for them, you are sad yourself,
I am the saddest, uninvited.

Ah, you don’t want to drink, to eat.
It is so cheerless around here.
How did you count? How could you do it?—
How could you just forget the number?

Could you not, dare not accept
That six (two brothers and your parents
With you yourself, your wife…) —except

Just me! — still comes, of course, to seven!
You laid your table just for six.
The world in sixes can’t be measured!
I’d like to be a ghost and mixWith your (my!) kin..
It’s not a pleasure

To be seen
      Now as a bogey… like a thief,
Oh! – not a single soul disturbing... —
I sit right where the seventh would be
Without a setting – self-asserting.

Now! – I knocked over the glass!
And everything that carved to spill more, —
Blood out of wounds, salt-tears out of eyes —
Off the tablecloth —onto the floor.

And – coffin’s gone! Farewells – none!
The spell’s broken, house woke up now.
Like death come to a wedding feast,
I’m life itself — arrived for supper.

No one is brother, husband, son,
Nor friend — but even so, I blame you:
— You laid a table for six souls –
But not for me – at the end of the table.

6/03/1941