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Padraic Colum ,
1881-1972
(Падраик Колум) 

Monkeys

Две обезьянки

Two little creatures
With faces the size of
A pair of pennies
Are clasping each other.
"Ah, do not leave me,"
One says to other,
In the high monkey-
Cage in the beast-shop.

There no people
To gape at them now,
For people are loth to
Peer in thedimness;
Have they not builded
Streets and playhouses,
Sky-signs and bars,
To lose the loneliness
Shaking the hearts
Of the two little Monkeys?

Yes. But who watches
The penny-small faces
Can hear the voices:
"Ah, do no not leave me;
Suck I will give you
Warmth and clasping,
And if you slip from
This beam I can never
Find you again"

Dim is the evening,
An chill is the weather;
There, drawn from their coloured
Hemisphere
The apes liliputian
With faces the size of
A pair of pennies,
And voices aslow as
The flow of my blood.

© 2000 Elena and Yacov Feldman