List of Russian-language poets

Until our enemy must run
From verse as one who on the stair
Hears the police, then drops in dread
And cannot cover his despair.

It was a day like any other,
The same dull sky, the same drab street.
There was the usual angry pother
From the policeman on his beat.
Proud of his fine new miter's luster,
The archpriest strutted down the nave;
And the pub rocked with brawl and bluster,
Where scamps gulped down what fortune gave.
The market women buzzed and bickered
Like flies above the honeypots.
The burghers' wives bustled and dickered,
Eyeing the drapers' latest lots.
An awe-struck peasant stared and stuttered,
Regarding an official door
Where yellow rags of paper fluttered:
A dead ukase of months before.
The fireman ranged his tower, surveying
The roofs, like the chained bears one sees;
And soldiers shouldered arms, obeying
The drill sergeant's obscenities.
Slow carts in caravans went winding
Dockward, where floury stevedores moiled;
And, under convoy, in the blinding
Dust of the road, a student toiled,
And won some pity, thus forlorn,
From the drunk hand who poured his scorn
In curses on some pal and brother. . . .
Russia was aching with the thorn
And bearing her old cross, poor mother.
That day, a day like any other,
And not a soul knew that Lenin was born!

"On Kazbek the clouds are meeting,
Like the mountain eagle-flock;
Up to them, along the rock,
Dash the wild Uzdens retreating;
Onward faster, faster fleeting,
Routed by the Russian brood,
Foameth all their track with blood.

"Fast behind the regiments yelling,
Lance and bayonet raging hot,
And the seed of death their shot.
On the mail the sabre knelling,
Gallop, steed! for far thy dwelling,
See! they fall, but distant still
Is the forest of the hill!

"Russian shot our hearts is rending,
Falls the Mullah on his knee,
To the Lord of Light bows he,
To the Prophet he is bending;
Like a shaft his prayer ascending,
Upward flies to Allah's throne
Il-Allah! Oh, save thine own!

"Ah, despair! What crash like thunder!
Lo! a sign from heaven above!
Lo! the forest seems to move,
Crashes, murmurs, bursts asunder!
Lower, nearer, wonder! wonder!
Safe once more the Muslim bold
In their forest mountain-hold!"

With no new words, new and forever false.
As though we had hung a wreath of red roses
On a black, wrought-iron door
Leading into a vault
Where lay the rotting body
Of a beloved dream.
Autumnal days were upon us,
Days of inscrutable longing;
We were treading the stairs
Of autumnal passion.
In my heart a wound,
Like the lamp of an ikon,
Burned and would not be quenched.
The cup of autumnal poison
We pressed to our lips.
By the serpentine garden path Autumn had led us
To crepuscular lilies
Upon the pale, sand-humbled pond.
And over the lilied waters and in the roses of evening,
We loved, more superstitiously.
And through the dark night,
On the languorous bed,
At the feet of my love,
I loved death anew.
The minutes rang tinkling like crystals
At the brink of an autumn grave:
Autumn and Death drunkenly clinked their glasses.
I pressed my thirsty lips
To the feet the ikon-lamp burnished,
I drank the cup of love.
Burned by the fires of sins,
Stretched on the cross of lusts,
Shamed, being needlessly faithless,
I drank the cup of love.
In the hour of ineffable dalliance
I sensed the whisper
Of autumn pain, of autumn passion.
And kisses like keen needles
Burned and pierced,
Weaving a wreath of thorns.

And under fire you tossed and twisted,
As through your boughs the torment ran,
And when you met your mortal moment
You died as gravely as a man.

Flourish through the countless ages,
Moscow ! many-towered town.
Thou art central heart of Russia,
Russia's glory, Russia's crown!

Write winged verses whose resistless sweep
Rouses the sluggard elements from sleep.

O cork that stoppered the strong iodine,
How rapidly you rotted quite away!
Thus is the body quietly consumed,
Burnt by the soul, unseen, day after day.

You know how to weep—you're going to die.
Someone's writing on walls—he's going to die.
She has beautiful eyes—she's going to die.
It is time to relax—we're going to die.

Someone's writing on walls—he's going to die.
It smells of spring showers—someone just died.
They have something to say—they're going to die.
Someone's quietly laughing—I'm going to die.

I dared to speak the Word—I'm going to die.
I dared to sing "fuck!" (*) -- someone just died.
Someone's watching the Sun—he's almost dead.
Someone's watching my step—he's ready to die.

This is optimism.
Our optimism.
New optimism.

The air strikes chill. Although transparent spring
Has clothed Petropolis in pale green down,
The Neva's waves are faintly sickening
As if they were Medusa's coiling crown.
On the embankment of our northern stream
The fireflies of hurrying motors gleam.
Steel dragonflies and beetles flit and whirr,
And stars are pins of gold whose glitter pricks,
But stars can never mortally transfix
The heavy emerald of the sea water.

There will be a moon.
Already a bit of it
shows.
And now a full moon is hanging in the air.
It must be that God is fishing about
with a marvelous
silver spoon
in the star chowder.

Where the pond lies, an open secret,
Where apple bloom is surf and sigh,
And where the garden, a lake dwelling,
Holds out in front of it the sky.

The Bronze Horseman

Boris Godunov (play)'

The sunflower has nowhere
to shelter from the rain
his feet in mud, the water
between the beds won't drain.
Capped, carroty and freckled,
you see the chap remain
fast in the bed why should he
run? He likes the rain.

Just wait for me and Til return,
To spite all deaths that men can die.
Let those who gave up waiting say:
"It was his luck"-that is a lie.
It is not theirs to understand
Who gave up waiting, wearily.
How under fire I was safe,
Since, waiting, you protected me.
And none but you and I will know
How I escaped the thrust of fate-
Simply because, better than all
The others, you knew how to wait.

We do not know who leads us onward,
What end our hurrying wheels will find,
But, like a bird set free, the spirit
Darts on a wing that rips the wind.

And I on the chill sands shall lie, receding
Into the dimness of unreckoned days . . .
Like the shed skin the snake is coldly eyeing,
My youth, outgrown, has shrunk under my gaze.

On the porch a trooper marvels
At a starling: "Take my word,
There is something to that fellow,
Yes, a starling's quite a bird.

"In this scorched and blistered garden
That's attached to our new base,
All day long the chap is busy,
Keeps at work about the place;

"He's rebuilding, he's repairing.
Just as if to signify:
War or no war, still the thing is
To increase and multiply."

The cab breaks down, so does the carriage;
Season of colds in chest and nose,
To you, fair Spring, is reverence tendered
By cartwrights and by medicos.

Only the grave will know.