Just a Poem by Konstantin Pavlov
Paradox
By Konstantin Pavolv


The topic is the likes of us.

If we didn't have the likes of us,
we would have to create the likes of us.
It's frightening.

Every day,
with tremendous effort,
an amoeba, a giant amoeba,
shortens
the distance between us.
She moves her little false feet,
she waves her little false hands,
she fixes her little false smile.

Someday she will reach me.

Frozen by her insistence,
I will surely give myself to her.
(The way we give ourselves while asleep
or in a drunken stupor -
in equal doses of lust and hate.)

This conversation is not self-punishment.
(I would kill myself,
if I resembled the swine
who washes herself
in the puddle of her own tears
and finds it a special pleasure.)

The amoeba senses
the difference between us.
And my apartness will always be
the measure of her loneliness.

The moment
she reaches me,
she will turn into a perfect,
meek,
and tragic circle.
Enclosed, I will twinkle a long time,
a part of her own substance.

And when the two of us
begin to crawl again, perhaps I will be
one of her little false feet,
one of her little false hands,
one of her little false smiles.