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:
- Sergei Esenin (Serguei Yesenin, Sergueï Essénine) – Sounds of Sorrow
- In a Castle poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Зинаида Александрова – Смешные человечки
- Lines On Seeing A Lock Of Milton’s Hair poem – John Keats poems
- Dedication by Rainer Maria Rilke
- William Gilmore Simms – William Gilmore Simms
- America by Tony Hoagland
- To the Victor by William Ellery Leonard
- The Basset-Table : An Eclogue poem – Alexander Pope
- Валерий Брюсов – Февраль
- Shaun White – The Power Behind the Snowboard Throne
- To a son abroad by Sunil Sharma
- Never Sure Which You Are by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Every day I bear a burden by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- After a Tempest by William Cullen Bryant
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
- Ольга Берггольц – Мой дом
- Ольга Берггольц – Мне не поведать о моей утрате
- Ольга Берггольц – Марш оловянных солдатиков
- Ольга Берггольц – Майя
- Ольга Берггольц – Лучший город
- Ольга Берггольц – Ленинградская осень
- Ольга Берггольц – Ласточки над обрывом
- Ольга Берггольц – Кирову
- Ольга Берггольц – Какая тёмная зима
- Ольга Берггольц – Как на озёрном хуторе
- Ольга Берггольц – К сердцу Родины руку тянет
- Ольга Берггольц – Из “Писем с дороги”
- Ольга Берггольц – И вновь одна, совсем одна в дорогу
- Ольга Берггольц – Февральский дневник
- Ольга Берггольц – Два стихотворения дочерям
- Ольга Берггольц – Дорога на фронт
- Ольга Берггольц – Детскосельский парк
- Ольга Берггольц – Церковь “Дивная” в Угличе
- Ольга Берггольц – Борису Корнилову
- Ольга Берггольц – Беатриче (строгая любовь)
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.