Am I your keeper оn this Earth? Аm I your “catcher in the rye”?*
Is it my duty to explore your land of permanent despair?
Thanks God you moved and I can breathe… But then beneath the brooding sky
My cat has killed a singing bird and put it neatly on the stair.

And he was looking back at me with his transparent knowing eyes
As though commenting: “This is life, and there is nothing you can do”.
And rushing memory of you broke through deliberate disguise
of all the "peacefulness" of my enlightened journey without you.

They call it “toxic” nowadays — it’s either friendship or a lie,
Or rather sickness, but to think — who can be healthy in this life?
I know — tomorrow I will call and you will rave, complain, and cry.
I’ll be your keeper once again and stupid “catcher in the rye”.

2016

* “The Catcher in the Rye" — назва твору Дж. Д. Селінджера (1951)