A poem by Alexander Block – Alexandre Block – Alexandr Blok – Александр Блок
(1880-1921)
The restaurants on hot spring evenings
Lie under a dense and savage air.
Foul drafts and hoots from dunken revelers
Contaminate the thoroughfare.
Above the dusty lanes of suburbia
Above the tedium of bungalows
A pretzel sign begilds a bakery
And children screech fortissimo.
And every evening beyond the barriers
Gentlemen of practiced wit and charm
Go strolling beside the drainage ditches —
A tilted derby and a lady at the arm.
The squeak of oarlocks comes over the lake water
A woman’s shriek assaults the ear
While above, in the sky, inured to everything,
The moon looks on with a mindless leer.
And every evening my one companion
Sits here, reflected in my glass.
Like me, he has drunk of bitter mysteries.
Like me, he is broken, dulled, downcast.
The sleepy lackeys stand beside tables
Waiting for the night to pass
And tipplers with the eyes of rabbits
Cry out: “In vino veritas!”
And every evening (or am I imagining?)
Exactly at the appointed time
A girl’s slim figure, silk raimented,
Glides past the window’s mist and grime.
And slowly passing throught the revelers,
Unaccompanied, always alone,
Exuding mists and secret fragrances,
She sits at the table that is her own.
Something ancient, something legendary
Surrounds her presence in the room,
Her narrow hand, her silk, her bracelets,
Her hat, the rings, the ostrich plume.
Entranced by her presence, near and enigmatic,
I gaze through the dark of her lowered veil
And I behold an enchanted shoreline
And enchanted distances, far and pale.
I am made a guardian of the higher mysteries,
Someone’s sun is entrusted to my control.
Tart wine has pierced the last convolution
of my labyrinthine soul.
And now the drooping plumes of ostriches
Asway in my brain droop slowly lower
And two eyes, limpid, blue, and fathomless
Are blooming on a distant shore.
Inside my soul a treasure is buried.
The key is mine and only mine.
How right you are, you drunken monster!
I know: the truth is in the wine.
A few random poems:
- A Journey Through The Moonlight by Russell Edson
- Шекспир – Ты положи с моей любовью рядом – Сонет 117
- Pax Britannica poem – Alfred Austin
- I too want to ESCAPE by Neelam Sinha
- Sonnet 6: Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface by William Shakespeare
- Омар Хайям – Если бог не услышит меня в вышине
- Epigram on Francis Grose the Antiquary by Robert Burns
- On Reading Omar Khayyam by Vachel Lindsay
- Омар Хайям – Кто мне скажет что завтра случится со мной
- Weathering poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
- What the People Said by Rudyard Kipling
- The First Jasmines by Rabindranath Tagore
- This Aloneness by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Владимир Корнилов – Погодинка
- Tatiana’s Letter poem – Alexander Pushkin
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- ASHA APARTMENTS, 416, S.V. ROAD by Santosh Kumar Panda
- As if by Sara Herlihy
- Amity’s Death by SAAJIDA GORA
- America, America by Saadi Youssef
- A Writer’s Pen by Sahiti Siddharth
- A Traveller’s Guide to the East Indies by S. K. Kelen
- A sense’s addiction to chocolate by SAAJIDA GORA
- A Father’s Hands by Scott Ransopher
- The Unborn by Sharon Olds
- The Space Heater by Sharon Olds
- The Sash by Sharon Olds
- The Pact by Sharon Olds
- The Mortal One by Sharon Olds
- The End by Sharon Olds
- The Daughter Goes To Camp by Sharon Olds
- The Clasp by Sharon Olds
- The Borders by Sharon Olds
- The Arrivals by Sharon Olds
- Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds
- Primitive by Sharon Olds
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works
Alexander Blok (1880-1921), also Block, was a Russian poet, writer, publicist, playwright, translator and literary critic. A classic of Russian literature.