Author's website Alexander Korotko

***

Folds near the lips, as if dried
tributaries, that once fell
at the mouth of a large river.
A trap of embalmed wrinkles
in the mausoleum of your face.
Eyes, sentinels on guard
of unfulfilled hopes, and cheeks,
once looked like hills
and now – like the gullies.
And here is the forehead with the ones moved
tectonic fissures,

that resemble the dams — after all
you cannot cross the wade of life.
A face is like a place, like an uninhabited island,
lived in happy seclusion
under the supervision of tired time.