"There is only one color in our lives, just like on an artist's palette, which gives meaning to life and art. It's the color of love."

Marc Chagall

He's old and resembles his loneliness.

He doesn't care to discuss the weather.

He cuts straight to the question:

"Aren't you from Vitebsk?.."

His old-fashioned jacket is worn at the lapels...

"No, I'm not from Vitebsk..."

A long pause.

Then words, monotonous and gloomy:

"I work and I ail...

There's an exhibition in Venice...

So you're not from Vitebsk?.."

"No, not from Vitebsk..."

He looks away.

Doesn't hear, doesn't hear.

Breathing some unearthly distance,

trying to touch childhood tenderly...

And there are no Cannes, no Côte d'Azur,

no present-day fame...

Bright and bewildered,

he reaches for Vitebsk like a plant...

That Vitebsk of his — dusty and sweltering —

is pinned to the earth by a fire tower.

There are weddings and deaths, prayers and fairs.

There, especially large apples ripen,

and a sleepy cabbie rolls across the square...

"Aren't you from Vitebsk?.."

He falls silent.

Then suddenly utters, as if the most precious thing,

street names:

Smolenskaya,

Zamkovaya.

He boasts of the Vitebsk River like the Volga

and waves

his childishly transparent hand...

"So you're not from Vitebsk..."

Time to say goodbye.

To say goodbye.

To hurry back home...

Trees stand at attention along the road.

It grows dark...

And I'm sorry

that I'm not from Vitebsk.