A poem by Alexander Block – Alexandre Block – Alexandr Blok – Александр Блок
(1880-1921)
Those born in obscure times
Do not remember their way.
We, children of Russia’s frightful years
Cannot forget a thing.
Incinerating years!, do you bring tidings
of madness or of hope?
The days of war, the days of freedom
Have left a bloody sheen on our faces.
There is a muteness – the tocsin bell
Has made us close our lips.
In our hearts, once so ardent,
There is a fateful emptiness.
Let the croaking ravens
Take flight above our deathbed –
O Lord, O Lord, may those more worthy than us,
Behold Thy kingdom!
A few random poems:
- Sonnet CXLVIII by William Shakespeare
- Days Too Short by William Henry Davies
- Василий Жуковский – Торжество победителей
- Олег Бундур – Совет
- Вера Павлова – Попытка не пытка
- An Honest Poet’s Life Is Full Of Care by Malcolm Massiah
- A Spot by Thomas Hardy
- Владимир Маяковский – Власть канцелярии – вот слова “бюрократия” перевод… (РОСТА №655)
- Note to Reality by Tony Hoagland
- Яков Полонский – Блажен озлобленный поэт
- Old Tom Again by William Butler Yeats
- Anti-Thelyphthora. A Tale In Verse by William Cowper
- Screw-Guns by Rudyard Kipling
- Олег Григорьев – Однажды Сережа и Оля
- Владимир Гиппиус – Узел
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
- The Deserted Garden
- The Bayadere
- The Aisne
- Tezcotzinco
- Sonnet Xvi Who Shall Invoke Her
- Sonnet Xv
- Sonnet Xiv
- Sonnet Xiii
- Sonnet Xii
- Sonnet Xi
- Sonnet X
- Sonnet Viii
- Sonnet Vii
- Sonnet Vi
- Sonnet V
- Sonnet Ix
- Sonnet Iv
- Sonnet Iii
- Sonnet Ii
- Sonnet I
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.