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Aimé Césaire | My negritude is not a stone, its deafness hurled against the clamor of the day
my negritude is not a white speck of dead water on the dead eye of earth
my negritude is neither a tower nor a cathedral
it plunges into the red flesh of the soil
it delves into the burning flesh of the sky
it digs through the dark accretion... | Notebook of a Return to the Native Land |
Delmore Schwartz | Calmly we walk through this April’s day,
Metropolitan poetry here and there,
In the park sit pauper and rentier,
The screaming children, the motor-car
Fugitive about us, running away,
Between the worker and the millionaire
Number provides all distances,
It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now,
Many great dears are taken away,
... | Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day |
Edna St. Vincent Millay | My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light! | First Fig |
Rubén Darío | Juventud, divino tesoro,
¡ya te vas para no volver!
Cuando quiero llorar, no lloro...
y a veces lloro sin querer. | Canción de otoño en primavera |
Mina Loy | Spawn of Fantasies
Silting the appraisable
Pig Cupid his rosy snout
Rooting erotic garbage
'Once upon a time’
Pulls a weed white and star-topped
Among wild oats sewn in mucous-membrane
I would an eye in a bengal light
Eternity in a sky-rocket
Constellations in an ocean
Whose rivers run no fresher
Than a trickle of sal... | Songs to Joannes: I |
Léopold Sédar Senghor | Naked woman, black woman
Clothed with your colour which is life, with your form which is beauty!
In your shadow I have grown up; the gentleness of your hands was laid over my eyes.
And now, high up on the sun-pass, at the heart of summer, at the heart of noon, I come upon you, my Promised Land.
And your beauty strikes ... | Black Woman |
Conrad Aiken | Time is a dream, he thinks, a destroying dream;
It lays great cities in dust, it fills the seas;
It covers the face of beauty, and tumbles walls.
Where was the woman he loved? Where was his youth?
Where was the dream that burned his brain like fire?
Even a dream grows grey at last and falls.
He opened his book once mo... | The House of Dust |
François Villon | Dictes moy où, n'en quel pays,
Est Flora la belle Romaine,
Archipiada, ne Thaïs,
Qui fut sa cousine germaine?
Echo, parlant quand bruyt on maine
Dessus riviere ou sus estan,
Qui beauté eut trop plus qu’humaine?
Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?
Inform me where, within what land
Has Flora, lovely Roman, dwelled,
Or Archi... | Ballade des dames du temps jadis |
Geoffrey Chaucer | A knight ther was, and that a worthy man,
That fro the tyme that he first bigan
To riden out, he loved chivalrie,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie.
Ful worthy was he in his lordes werre,
And thereto hadde he riden, no man ferre,
As wel in cristendom as in hethenesse,
And evere honóured for his worthynesse. | The Canterbury Tales: General Prologue |
Vladimir Nabokov | He happens to be a French poet, that thin,
book-carrying man with a bristly gray chin;
you meet him whenever you go
across the bright campus, past ivy-clad walls.
The wind, which is driving him mad (this recalls
a rather good line in Hugo),
keeps making blue holes in the waterproof gloss
of college-bred poplars that ru... | Exile |
Hart Crane | And yet this great wink of eternity,
Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings,
Samite sheeted and processioned where
Her undinal vast belly moonward bends,
Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love;
Take this Sea, whose diapason knells
On scrolls of silver snowy sentences,
The sceptred terror of whose sessions rends... | Voyages II |
Julia Vinograd | Jerusalem dances on living bodies,
on dead bodies, on flesh, on stone
she doesn’t notice, she is not looking down.
'You love death more than me,' God accuses her,
'but I own death,
do you think you can win him away from me?
I give you leave to try,
and if you succeed
will you want my blessing on your marriage?’
’Alway... | The Book of Jerusalem: Death |
Andrey Beliy | Hearts are ignited by the sun
The sun expressly to eternity expiring
The sun is an eternal window
To the golden blinding.
A rose sits in the gold of curls.
This rose: how tenderly it sways!
Inside all roses, sunrays' liquid gold
Flows outward with crimson heat.
A pauper heart is filled with evil,
Ground up and burnt;... | The Sun |
Lorenz Hart | My funny valentine,
Sweet comic valentine,
You make me smile with my heart,
Your looks are laughable, unphotographable;
Yet you're my favorite work of art. | My Funny Valentine |
Louis Aragon | So I am speaking to the past Go ahead and laugh
At the sound of my words if you feel that way
He loved and Was and Came and Caressed
And Waited and Kept watch on the stairs which creaked
Oh violence violence I am a haunted man
And waited and waited bottomless wells
I thought I would die waiting
Silence sharpened pencil... | Poem to Shout in the Ruins (translated by Geoffrey Young) |
Robert Desnos | J'ai tant rêvé de toi que tu perds ta réalité.
Est-il encore temps d'atteindre ce corps vivant
Et de baiser sur cette bouche la naissance
De la voix qui m'est chère?
J’ai tant rêvé de toi que mes bras habitués, en étreignant ton ombre, à se croiser sur ma poitrine ne se plieraient pas au contour de ton corps, peut-être... | J'ai tant rêvé de toi |
Ezra Pound | Gladstone was still respected,
When John Ruskin produced
“Kings Treasuries”; Swinburne
And Rossetti still abused.
Foetid Buchanan lifted up his voice
When that faun’s head of hers
Became a pastime for
Painters and adulterers.
The Burne-Jones cartons
Have preserved her eyes;
Still, at the Tate, they teach
Cophetua to ... | Yeux Glauques (Hugh Selwyn Mauberley) |
Thomas Wyatt | They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themself in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change. | They Flee From Me |
Innokentiy Annenskiy | There is a love, and it resembles smoke:
Tucked within — it brings intoxication,
Set it free — and suddenly it's vanished…
Oh, to be like smoke — but be forever young.
There is a love, and it resembles shadows:In the day — lies at your feet, and heeds you well,
In the night — it ever-silently embraces…
Oh, to be like ... | Two Loves (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Syd Barrett | Isn't it good to be lost in the wood
Isn't it bad so quiet there, in the wood
Meant even less to me than I thought
With a honey plough of yellow prickly seeds
Clover honey pots and mystic shining feed
Well, the mad cat laughed at the man on the border
Hey ho, huff the Talbot
‘Cheat' he cried shouting kangaroo
It's true... | Octopus |
John Keats | A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of t... | Endymion |
T. S. Eliot | We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;T... | The Hollow Men |
Kendrick Lamar | I got this fire burnin' in me from within
Concentrated thoughts on who I used to be, I'm sheddin’ skin
Every day, a new version of me, a third of me demented, cemented in pain
Juggling the pros and cons of fame
I don't know how to make friends, I'm a lonely soul
I recollect this isolation, I was four years old
Truth be... | reincarnated |
Elizabeth Bishop | The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, an... | One Art |
José Martí | A sincere man am I
From the land where palm trees grow,
And I want before I die
My soul's verses to bestow.
I'm a traveller to all parts,
And a newcomer to none:
I am art among the arts,
With the mountains I am one.
I know how to name and class
All the strange flowers that grow;
I know every blade of grass,
Fatal lie a... | Versos sencillos I |
Arthur Rimbaud | And from then on I bathed in the Poem
Of the Sea, infused with stars and lactescent,
Devouring the azure verses; where, like a pale elated
Piece of flotsam, a pensive drowned figure sometimes sinks;
Where, suddenly dyeing the blueness, delirium
And slow rhythms under the streaking of daylight,
Stronger than alcohol, v... | The Drunken Boat (Wallace Fowlie Translation) |
Paul Verlaine | What have you done, you there,
weeping without cease,
tell me, yes you, what have you done
with all your youth? | Langueur |
Allen Ginsberg | America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your milli... | America |
Basil Bunting | Let us come upon him first as if in a dream,
anonymous triple presence,
memory made substance and tally of heart’s rot:
then in the waking Now be demonstrable, seem
sole aspect of being’s essence,
coffin to the living touch, self’s Iscariot.
Then he will loath the year’s recurrent long caress
without hope of divorce,
e... | Chorus Of Furies |
Edgar Allan Poe | Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. | The Raven |
Gertrude Stein | Why am I if I am uncertain reasons may inclose.
Remain remain propose repose chose.
I call carelessly that the door is open
Which if they may refuse to open
No one can rush to close.
Let them be mine therefor.
Everybody knows that I chose.
Therefor if therefore before I close.
I will therefore offer therefore I offer t... | Stanzas In Meditation: Stanza LXXXIII |
Patti Smith | His father died and left him a little farm in New England
All the long black funeral cars left the scene
And the boy was just standing there alone
Looking at the shiny red tractor
Him and his daddy used to sit inside
And circle the blue fields and grease the night
It was as if someone had spread butter
On all the fine ... | Birdland |
Jules Laforgue | The one who keeps me informed how a woman feels,
I shall say to her first, with my least frigid air,
'The sum of the angles of a triangle equals
Two right angles, my dear.
And if this cry escapes her: 'God, how I love you!’
'God rewards his own.' Or sadly contemplative:
'Keyboards have a heart. My theme is always of y... | Another complaint of Lord Pierrot (translated by Louis Simpson) |
Lou Reed | The myriad choices of his fate
Set themselves out upon a plate
For him to choose
What had he to lose?
Not a ghost bloodied country
All covered with sleep
Where the black angel did weep
Not an old city street in the east
Gone to choose
And wandering's brother
Walked on through the night
With his hair in his face
On a... | The Black Angel’s Death Song |
Langston Hughes | What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode? | Dream Deferred |
Robert Duncan | Often I am permitted to return to a meadow
as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
that is not mine, but is a made place,
that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
an eternal pasture folded in all thought
so that there is a hall therein
that is a made place, created by light
wherefrom the shadows that are forms fa... | Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow |
Paul Hoover | They are crying out in restaurants,
so delighted to be speaking,
they appear to be insane.
But we are the silent types,
who hold speech within
like the rustle of gold foil.
We eat our words and swallow hard.
There’s nothing much to say.
The knot’s in its nest, breathing.
A hand thinks it’s a bird.
The world ‘nows'; ... | Why is Quiet 'Kept'? |
Elizabeth Coatsworth | Cat, if you go outdoors, you must walk in the snow.
You will come back with little white shoes on your feet,
little white shoes of snow that have heels of sleet.
Stay by the fire, my Cat. Lie still, do not go.
See how the flames are leaping and hissing low,
I will bring you a saucer of milk like a marguerite,
so white ... | On a Night of Snow |
Audre Lorde | For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futur... | A Litany for Survival |
Enrique González Martínez | Twist the neck of the swan with its deceptive plumage
that gives its white note to the blue of the fountain;
he walks his grace no more, but he doesn't feel
the soul of things nor the voice of the landscape.
Flee from all forms and all language
that do not go according to the latent rhythm
of deep life... and adores i... | Tuércele el cuello al cisne |
William Blake | Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry? | The Tyger |
Sylvia Plath | I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it—
A sort of walking miracle, my skin...And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
That melts ... | Lady Lazarus |
Percy Bysshe Shelley | Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that ... | Ozymandias |
Annie Finch | I dreamed of a poet who gave me a whale
that shadowed clear pools through the sea-weeded shade.
When beached sea-foam dried on the rocks, it would sail
down currents that gathered to pool and cascade
with turbulent order.
She brims with transparent water,
as mother and poet and daughter.
The surface is broken and arch... | A Carol For Carolyn (in amphibrach) |
Dora Sigerson Shorter | Heaven help your home to-night,
MacCormac; for I know
A white witch woman is your bride:
You married for your woe.
You thought her but a simple maid
That roamed the mountain-side;
She put the witch’s glance on you,
And so became your bride.
But I have watched her close and long
And know her all too well;
I never chur... | The White Witch |
Rainer Maria Rilke | And it was almost a girl, and she came out of
That single blessedness of song and lyre,
And shone clear through her springtime-veil
And made herself a bed inside my hearing.
And slept within me. And her sleep was all:
The trees, each that I admired, those
Perceptible distances, the meadows I felt,
And every wonder tha... | Sonnets to Orpheus I.2 (translated by A. S. Kline) |
Kenneth Rexroth | Strong ankled, sun burned, almost naked,
The daughters of California
Educate reluctant humanists;
Drive into their skulls with tennis balls
The unhappy realization
That nature is still stronger than man.
The special Hellenic privilege
Of the special intellect seeps out
At last in this irrigated soil.
Sweat of athletes ... | Vitamins And Roughage |
Boris Poplavskiy | Jouissance of violets in the basement
Where long dead stars sighed of sepulchral murk
Still phantoms would fling open windows
And morning rose.
They hurt so badly, faces hid away
Until the very dusk
Across its every dimming ray
Forever passed
And in the night, flames sprouted from the walls of homes
Above a void leaned... | The Play of Violets in the Basement (Translated by Aleksey Calvin) |
Bernadette Mayer | silver and clover the clover
where we sat there over
and over again
and again knee
comes sings a few
things comes
rings a
few things
were settling
the stars
were out
the lines
in the street were about
fines what
about lines
single double triple quadruple
(four times)
what about a double four
times how
about a bass a tr... | Here's Gold |
E. E. Cummings | anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did.
Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain
children guessed(but only a few
and down they for... | [anyone lived in a pretty how town] |
Wendy Cope | At lunchtime I bought a huge orange —
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave —
They got quarters and I had a half. | The Orange |
Seamus Heaney | The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand
And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'cloc... | Mid-Term Break |
Aesop Rock | I'm twice born, once in 7-something
Once as the resurrection of honorable function
Been shoveling coal as the engine's doctor
Long enough to see my silhouette acquire a permanent kink in the posture
The maintenance of icicle spirit by the warmth of true endearment
Was, is, and forever will be a luxury
I'm a sovereignty... | Oxygen |
Momus | God is a tender pervert, and the angels are voyeurs.
Watching us forever, their vision never blurs
They make us, then forget us for a hundred million years
And then by chance they glance at us and something in them stirs
They find us so provocative, so weak, so full of pride
Our cleverness, our nakedness, fills them wi... | The Angels Are Voyeurs |
Wallace Stevens | The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down. | Of Mere Being |
Lydia Lunch | You ever wake up with hangover
The size of Mississippi
Feeling like you were broken down
On the wrong side of nightmare alley...
Busted up and thrown up
Tell'em and you can quote me on this
Because I fucking felt like it. | Gone City |
Emily Dickinson | Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all | Hope is the thing with feathers |
Daevid Allen | Are you able to be free?
Do you know what's on your menu?
Do you understand a tree
Or future creature?
Do you really think you know?
So you think you got the answer?
Don't you think you oughta know
You're just the dancer? | So What |
Ada Limón | Say tomorrow doesn’t come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun’s a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl’s eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon’s a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt’s plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen’s a cow’s corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, s... | The Conditional |
Omar Khayyam | Wake! For the Sun, who scattered into flight
The Stars before him from the Field of Night,
Drives Night along with them from Heav'n, and strikes
The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light. | The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Fitzgerald Translation) |
Edward Fitzgerald | Thus, then, live I
Till, 'mid all the gloom,
By Heaven! the bold sun
Is with me in the room
Shining, shining!
Then the clouds part,
Swallows soaring between;
The spring is alive,
And the meadows are green!
I jump up like mad,
Break the old pipe in twain,
And away to the meadows,
The meadows again! | Old Song |
Kenneth Koch | As the adjective is lost in the sentence,
So I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat
You have enchanted me with a single kiss
Which can never be undone
Until the destruction of language | Permanently |
Diane di Prima | I have just realized that the stakes are myself
I have no other
ransom money, nothing to break or barter but my life
my spirit measured out, in bits, spread over
the roulette table, I recoup what I can
nothing else to shove under the nose of the maitre de jeu
nothing to thrust out the window, no white flag | Revolutionary Letter #1 |
Alfred Tennyson | O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,
O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
O sweet and bitter in a breath,
What whispers from thy lying lip?
'The stars,' she whispers, 'blindly run;
A web is wov'n across the sky;
From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun:
'And all the phantom, Nature, stands
With all the... | In Memoriam A.H.H. |
Hugh MacDiarmid | I belong to a different country than yours
And none of my travels have been in the same lands
Save where Arzachel or Langrenus allures
Such spirits as ours, and the Straight Wall stands,
But crossing shear planes extruded in long lines of ridges,
Torsion cylinders, crater rings, and circular seas
And ultra-basic xenoli... | The Eemis Stane |
Aleister Crowley | Io Pan! Io Pan! Come over the sea
From Sicily and from Arcady!
Roaming as Bacchus, with fauns and pards
And nymphs and satyrs for thy guards,
On a milk-white ass, come over the sea
To me, to me,
Come with Apollo in bridal dress
(Spheperdess and pythoness)
Come with Artemis, silken shod,
And wash thy white thigh, beauti... | Hymn To Pan |
Marianne Moore | Openly, yes,
with the naturalness
of the hippopotamus or the alligator
when it climbs out on the bank to experience the
sun, I do these
things which I do, which please
no one but myself. Now I breathe and now I am sub-
merged; the blemishes stand up and shout when the object
in view was a
renaissance; shall I say
the... | Black Earth |
Chuck D | Banned from our damn so called country
No claim y'all know the goddamn name
Some got the rest of the planet to feel us damn it
Substance over style, that's right we on exile
Them ol' heads from strong out the velt
No love good looking out but damn sure felt
Hear me fear me appeared to disappear
The sequel said keep PE ... | How You Sell Soul To A Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul |
Francis Ledwidge | All the dead kings came to me
At Rosnaree, where I was dreaming,
A few stars glimmered through the morn,
And down the thorn the dews were streaming.
And every dead king had a story
Of ancient glory, sweetly told.
It was too early for the lark,
But the starry dark had tints of gold.
I listened to the sorrows three
Of ... | The Larks |
Scawen Blunt | Crimes find accomplices, and Murder weapons.
The ways of Statesmen are an easy road.
All swords are theirs, the noblest with the neediest.
And those who serve them best are men of good.
What need to blush, to trifle with dissembling?
A score of honest tongues anon shall swear.
Blood flows. The Senate's self shall spre... | The Wind |
Lawrence Ferlinghetti | The changing light
at San Francisco
is none of your East Coast light
none of your
pearly light of Paris
The light of San Francisco
is a sea light
an island light
And the light of fog
blanketing the hills
drifting in at night
through the Golden Gate
to lie on the city at dawn | I Am Waiting |
Lord Byron | She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes: | She Walks in Beauty |
Frank O'Hara | It's my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets
on. They protect them from falling
bricks, I guess. Then onto the
avenue where skirts are flipping
above heels and blow up over
grat... | A Step Away From Them |
Leonard Cohen | There were three of us this morning
I'm the only one this evening
But I must go on
The frontiers are my prison
Oh, the wind, the wind is blowing
Through the graves the wind is blowing
Freedom soon will come
Then we'll come from the shadows | The Partisan |
Mary Coleridge | And in her lurid eyes there shone
The dying flame of life's desire,
Made mad because its hope was gone,
And kindled at the leaping fire
Of jealousy and fierce revenge,
And strength that could not change nor tire. | The Other Side Of A Mirror |
Alexander Pushkin | And banning darkness nightly-swarming
From golden-plated skies above,
Young sunrise to replace the former
Would fleet, the night-hour cut in half. | The Bronze Horseman (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Zinaida Shishova | How strange, oh, God, like under euthanasia,
Thy earth today.
Behind the window, each like an acacia,
The poplars sway. | How Strange |
Velimir Khlebnikov | Where did he go, unto his end
Would toss the maiden-miscreant
Pine needly boughs, green linden branches,
Severely bitter annotations... | Vila and the Leshiy (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Vladimir Mayakovsky | Can't do it alone
grand piano can't carry
(and even less so,
the fireproof safe).
But if not the safe
nor piano,
how can I
bring over my heart, just to carry it back | Impossible (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Vadim Samoylov | Out here in the night, let’s meet, you and I
Smoke some opium, our treat-read-eat
Out here in the night, let’s meet, you and I
In Chinese to speak indeed
Don’t hide music though, it’s true opium
For no-one else, only for us
Out here in the night, let’s die happily
Playing up some deca-danse... | Opium For No-One (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Aleksander Blok | Above the restaurants every evening
The heated air goes deaf and wild,
And reigns over the yells of drunkards
The musky spirit of spring night.
And far, above the dusty alley,
Above the humdrum summer homes,
A bake-shop’s pretzel speckles golden,
And somewhere sounds a baby’s bawl.
And every night, beyond the crossin... | The Stranger (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Mikhail Svetlov | We charged at the foe,
And we camped on the heath,
One song–Little Apple–
Held clutched in our teeth.
A song which still safeguard
To this very day
The malachite steppe
And the newly-mown hay... | Grenada (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Elizaveta Akasheva | Gave out new names — such crude and earthly names —
And augured,
Bright as chrysanthemums, her eyes would laugh away
And summoned.
A fractious woman — not a woman — she was being.
A mystery within Her — endless, lidless — living. | In a Chrysanthemum (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Anna Akhmatova | It wasn't long ago, he was beside me here;
Seemed so in love, and was so tender, so my own,
But it was back in winter, under snow…
And now comes spring, its sighs with poisons veer
It wasn't long ago, he was beside me here | I wasn't brought a letter, not today (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Yegor Letov | Far-away Ophelia laughing in her sleep:
A chubby-bellied thrush, a fuzzy deer
Yesteryear's habitual pencil sketch of snow
Cheerfully crunches thru the teeth
Fancied up Ophelia flowing over borders
Honey snakes, raspberry poisons
A galvanized May, a tiny rubber trolly
A long-expired ticket for a rerun showing
Ophelia ... | Ophelia (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Anna Barkova | With the foes on the other side
Is my good old friend.
Oh death, come and fly my way
Out of darling hands | Dear Foe (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Viktor Tsoy | One who at age fifteen ran away from home might
Struggle to vibe with a former boarding school student;
And the one who has a fine existential plan
Seldom considers something entirely different... | Boshetoonmy (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Nikolay Komyagin | Sleeps the giant realm
Evening feels unending
By the belfry, wind
Rises on the Kremlin | Apple Orchard (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Alexey Khvostenko | One's like a yellow lion golden-maned;
Next to an azure ox of flooded eyes;
With them is the skyways' golden eagle,
Whose bright gaze is beaming unforgettable! | Paradise (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Bulat Okudzhava | Roar of weapons, bullets’ squeal,
Clanging spikes and sabers
All their noises in the chime
Of these drops may vanish
Sunshine, May, Arbat, and love
Loftiest career!
Tincture of the Danish king, drink up, cavaliers!
Tincture of the Danish king, drink up, cavaliers! | Tincture of the Danish King (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Osip Mandelshtam | My beast, my era, who would bear
Within your corneas to glimpse,
And with their blood to glue together
The backbones of two centuries?
Blood is a builder, and she gushes
From every earthly thing, in sprays.
The spineless laggard merely flushes
Upon the doorstep of new days.
A creature must, while life keeps grasping,
... | Century (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Mikhail Lermontov | The waves are playing, wind is whistling,
The mast is bending, and it creaks;
Alas! Not happiness it’s seeking,
Nor from contented bliss it flees! | The Sail (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Krovostok | Turns out God was one mark-ass dummy
Just a fancied-out wee marky toast
Now, where shadows are sliding on gravel
By the breeze every shadow throbs. | Lenin (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Konstantin Vaginov | Out of our eyes of green bloom flowers
And petals are proclaiming thoughts of ours,
A guilty camomile in hand, a crazy Jesus
Roams, guided only by his eyes. | Journey Into Chaos (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
W.H. Auden | O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart. | As I Walked Out Last Evening |
Georgiy Ivanov | An ordinary day, a normal garden, yes,
But why is it that bells keep ringing everyplace?
And nightingales sing out, and flowers on the snow,
Oh, why, just tell me now, or maybe you don't know? | I do not beg for love, I do not sing of spring (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Georgiy Adamovich | You must unlove the past. And then, in time,
Your love of nature too would disappear
And you'll grow more indifferent each day,
And even more each week, and more each year. | Don't speak to anyone. Cease drinking wine… (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Marina Tsvetaeva | Don't expect me to haunt and threaten
Don't assume that's my grave, these signs!
See, I also was once in love with
Laughing out at such awkward times.
Blood would rush to my skin from laughter,
And my curls in mid-air would weave.
Yet, I too passed along, dear stroller.
Passerby, stop right there, don't leave!
Now, f... | Passerby (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
Afanasy Fet | On nature ever idly spying,
Forgetting everything, I'm fond
Of watching shooting swallows flying
While evening rolls upon the pond. | The Swallows |
Elena Fanaylova | The light falls. We smoke in the park.
Yellow comes down from above.
The frozen apple high overhead
Has kept its red. | Old New Year (translated from Russian by Aleksey Calvin) |
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