Russian Poetry Quotes

I’m kissing you now — across The gap of a thousand years.

Don't you know no one can escape the power of creatures reaching out with breath alone?

One should write only those books from whose absence one suffers. In short: the ones you want on your own desk.

Not sorry, not calling, not crying All will pass like smoke of white apple trees Seized by the gold of autumn, I will no longer be young.

I’ll rise up as a poem…

Meanings are translatable. Words are untranslatable… More briefly – a word is translatable, its sound is not.

The one that burned the hottest is the first to die.

But then he touched the flowers With the dry tips of his fingers. "Tell me how men kiss you. Tell me how you kiss.

We don't know how to say goodbye, We wander on, shoulder to shoulder Already the sun is going down You're moody, and I am your shadow. Let's step inside a church, hear prayers, masses for the dead Why are we so different from the rest? Outside in the graveyard we sit on a frozen branch. That stick in your hand is tracing Mansions in the snow in which we will always be together.

Where does such tenderness come from And what do I do with it, you, sly, Adolescent, vagabond singer, Whose lashes couldn’t be longer?

How quiet the writing, how noisy the printing.

He loved three things in this life: Vespers, white peacocks, And old maps of America, Didn't love children crying, Raspberries with tea, Or feminine hysteria ...And I was his wife.

‎I was satisfied with haiku until I met you, jar of octopus, cuckoo's cry, 5-7-5, but now I want a russian novel, a 50-page description of you sleeping, another 75 of what you think staring at your window.

After a night of insomnia the body gets weaker, Becomes dear but no one’s — not even your own.

How can the confessor teach/ those who are lost and sick at heart,/ when he himself, among the sinners,/ is worst, and most forsaken?/ It is only a game we play/ with other people's sins./ Besides, everyone knows/ that everyone lies confessing.

If you prefer, I'll be pure raging meat, or if you prefer, as the sky changes tone, I'll be absolutely tender, not a man, but a cloud in trousers!

Politics How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics? Yet here's a travelled man that knows What he talks about, And there's a politician That has read and thought, And maybe what they say is true Of war and war's alarms, But O that I were young again And held her in my arms!

That’s all poetry is, really: something odd, coming out. Normal speech, overflowed. A failed attempt to do justice to the world. The poet proves that language is inadequate by throwing herself at the fence of language and being bound by it. Poetry is the resultant bulging of the fence.

I hope for a light grief in old age. I was born in Rome and it has returned to me. My autumn was a kind of she-wolf, And August - the month of Caesars - smiled at me.

For one can live in friendship With verses and with cards, with Plato and with wine, And hide beneath the gentle cover of our playful pranks A noble heart and mind.

Soffirò...morirò... ma intanto sole, vento, vino, tralalà

Here's how I used to think you made a book: a poet comes along, mouth half open, inspired, then suddenly the idiot bursts into song - fancy that!

It [Bach's cello suites] is like a great diamond," said [Mischa] Maisky in a thick Russian accent, "with so many different cuts that reflect light in so many different ways.

Where does such tenderness come from? These curls that I stroke with my hand Aren't the first that I've stroked, and I Knew lips that were darker than yours.

He loved three things alone: White peacocks, evensong, old maps of America. He hated children crying, and raspberry jam with his tea, and womanish hysteria. ...And then he married me. 1911

From early on, we loved the broken-hearted, And knew that home-life wasn't made for us.

One of the most brilliant Russian writers of the twentieth century, Yevgeny Zamyatin belongs to the tradition in Russian literature represented by Gogol, Leskov, Bely, Remizov, and, in certain aspects of their work, also by Babel and Bulgakov. It is a tradition, paradoxically, of experimenters and innovators. Perhaps the principal quality that unites them is their approach to reality and its uses in art - the refusal to be bound by literal fact, the interweaving of reality and fantasy, the transmutation of fact into poetry, often grotesque, oblique, playful, but always expressive of the writer's unique vision of life in his own, unique terms.

No jewels, save my eyes, do I own, but I have a rose which is even softer than my rosy lips. And a quiet youth said: 'There is nothing softer than your heart.' And I lowered my gaze...” I wrote back telling Liza that her poems were bad and she ought to stop composing. Sometime later I saw her in another cafe, sitting at a long table, abloom and ablaze among a dozen young Russian poets. She kept her sapphire glance on me with a mocking and mysterious persistence.

I regret not being a grove, which arms itself with leaves. I find it hard to be with minutes, they have completely confused me. It really upsets me terribly that I can be seen in reality.

I've played Romeo for Juliet (But in depth) It's vignettes of silhouettes (And then read) And watched Russian roulette, yeah red Soviet Yet doing it simultaneously While dropping down shed oubliettes Turned around and took truth to the head that Love is the ugliest thing too beautiful for death

The Elm Log By Alexander Solzhenitsyn We were sawing firewood when we picked up an elm log and gave a cry of amazement. It was a full year since we had chopped down the trunk, dragged it along behind a tractor and sawn it up into logs, which we had then thrown on to barges and wagons, rolled into stacks and piled up on the ground - and yet this elm log had still not given up! A fresh green shoot had sprouted from it with a promise of a thick, leafy branch, or even a whole new elm tree. We placed the log on the sawing-horse, as though on an executioner's block, but we could not bring ourselves to bite into it with our saw. How could we? That log cherished life as dearly as we did; indeed, its urge to live was even stronger than ours.

I don't know if you're alive or dead. Can you on earth be sought, or only when the sunsets fade be mourned secretly in my thought? All is for you: the daily prayer, the sleepless heat at night, and of my verses, the white flock, and of my eyes, the blue fire. No-one was more cherished, no-one tortured me more, not even the one who betrayed me to torture, not even the one who caressed me and forgot.

A chestnut-haired child Cheering up, went and stood in his stall. And took the whole incident like a young colt - and to live seemed worthwhile, and to labor, worthy.

I was born in the night of the second and third Of January, ninety-something-or-other, An unreliable year, and the centuries Surround me with fire.

My soul - born in a nameless place

I am your seventh Day, your longed-for Sunday's rest, Your passion and your seventh heaven

I understood that with our moans, we raise The long deceased from underneath the ground

Between the ages of ten and fifteen in St. Petersburg, I must have read more fiction and poetry—English, Russian and French—than in any other five-year period of my life. I relished especially the works of Wells, Poe, Browning, Keats, Flaubert, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Alexander Blok. On another level, my heroes were the Scarlet Pimpernel, Phileas Fogg, and Sherlock Holmes. In other words, I was a perfectly normal trilingual child in a family with a large library. At a later period, in Western Europe, between the ages of 20 and 40, my favorites were Housman, Rupert Brooke, Norman Douglas, Bergson, Joyce, Proust, and Pushkin. Of these top favorites, several—Poe, Jules Verne, Emmuska Orezy, Conan Doyle, and Rupert Brooke—have lost the glamour and thrill they held for me. The others remain intact and by now are probably beyond change as far as I am concerned.

Every soul is vast and wants to express itself fully. If it’s denied an adequate instrument (and we’re all denied that, at birth, some more than others), out comes…poetry, i.e., truth forced out through a restricted opening. That’s all poetry is, really: something odd, coming out. Normal speech, overflowed. A failed attempt to do justice to the world. The poet proves that language is inadequate by throwing herself at the fence of language and being bound by it. Poetry is the resultant bulging of the fence.

He knew this place, where once in sport/The flood had played and waves had bubbled,/Defiant in their fierce despair;/He knew these lions, and this square,/And him whose bronze head dominated/The darkness from its lofty height –/Whose fateful head will had on this site/Decreed a city be created.

The Last Toast I drink to our demolished hose, to all this wickedness, to you, our loneliness together, I raise my glass - And to the dead-cold eyes, the lie that has betrayed us, the coarse, brutal world, the fact that God has not saved us. 1934

Poor land, poor land, what do you mean to the heart that moves in me? Poor love, poor love, poor wife of mine, why do you weep so bitterly? (from Retribution book 2, I)

We see joy's shadow in our earthly dreaming, Somewhere joy exists: There are no shadows without substance.

Ten years between us, a hundred thousand Years between us - God builds no bridges

It's a grave but don't treat it as such, My spirit won't rise to haunt you... I, myself, loved laughing too much Whenever I wasn't supposed to!

- Why are your poems so different from one another? - Because the years are different.

Chaque chose doit resplendir à son heure, et cette heure est celle où des yeux véritables la regardent.

And you, my friends who have been called away, I have been spared to mourn for you and weep, not as a frozen willow over your memory, but to cry to the world the names of those who sleep. What names are those! I slam shut the calendar, down on your knees, all! Blood of my heart, the people of Leningrad march out in even rows, the living, the dead: fame can't tell them apart.

Before the spring arrives there are such days: Under the thick snow cover rests the lawn, The dry-and-jolly trees are making noise, Tender and strong, the wind is warm. And body is amazed at its own lightness, And your own home is alien to you, And song that had just previously been tiring With worry you are singing just like new.

A thought expressed is a falsehood." In poetry what is not said and yet gleams through the beauty of the symbol, works more powerfully on the heart than that which is expressed in words. Symbolism makes the very style, the very artistic substance of poetry inspired, transparent, illuminated throughout like the delicate walls of an alabaster amphora in which a flame is ignited. Characters can also serve as symbols. Sancho Panza and Faust, Don Quixote and Hamlet, Don Juan and Falstaff, according to the words of Goethe, are "schwankende Gestalten." Apparitions which haunt mankind, sometimes repeatedly from age to age, accompany mankind from generation to generation. It is impossible to communicate in any words whatsoever the idea of such symbolic characters, for words only define and restrict thought, but symbols express the unrestricted aspect of truth. Moreover we cannot be satisfied with a vulgar, photographic exactness of experimental photoqraphv. We demand and have premonition of, according to the allusions of Flaubert, Maupassant, Turgenev, Ibsen, new and as yet undisclosed worlds of impressionability. This thirst for the unexperienced, in pursuit of elusive nuances, of the dark and unconscious in our sensibility, is the characteristic feature of the coming ideal poetry. Earlier Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe said that the beautiful must somewhat amaze, must seem unexpected and extraordinary. French critics more or less successfully named this feature - impressionism. Such are the three major elements of the new art: a mystical content, symbols, and the expansion of artistic impressionability. No positivistic conclusions, no utilitarian computation, but only a creative faith in something infinite and immortal can ignite the soul of man, create heroes, martyrs and prophets... People have need of faith, they need inspiration, they crave a holy madness in their heroes and martyrs. ("On The Reasons For The Decline And On The New Tendencies In Contemporary Literature")

A shoe's material - leather - is calculable and finite. work of art's material (not sound, not word, not stone, not canvas, but spirit) is incalculable and infinite. There are no shoes once for always. Every last line of Sappho is once for always. This is why (calculability of material) boots held by the bootmaker are in better hands than are poems in the hand of the critic. There are no misunderstood boots, but how many misunderstood poems!

A poet's marriage to his time is a forced marriage. A marriage of which - as of any suffered violence - he is ashamed, and from which he tries to tear loose. Poets of the past tear into the past, those of the present into the future, as if time were less time for not being my own! All Soviet poetry is a stake on the future. Solely Mayakovsky, this zealot of his own conscience, this convict of the present day, came to love this present day; overcame, that is, the poet in himself.

Not long ago, after my last trip to Russia, I had a conversation with an American very eminent in the field of politics. I asked what he read, and he replied that he studied history, sociology, politics and law. "How about fiction - novels, plays poetry?" I asked. "No," he said, "I have never had time for them. There's so much else I have to read." I said, "Sir, I have recently visited Russia for the third time and don't know how well I understand Russians; but I do know that if I only read Russian history I could not have had the access to Russian thinking I have had from reading Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pushkin, Turgenev, Sholokhov, and Ehrenburg. History only recounts, with some inaccuracy, what they did. The fiction tells, or tries to tell, why they did it and what they felt and were like when they did it." My friend nodded gravely. "I hadn't though of that," he said. "Yes, that might be so; I had always thought of fiction as opposed to fact." But in considering the American past, how poor we would be in information without Huckleberry Fin, An American Tragedy, Winesburg, Ohio, Main Street, The Great Gatsby, and As I Lay Dying.

Native Soil There's Nobody simpler than us, or with more pride, or fewer tears. (1922) Our hearts don't wear it as an amulet, it doesn't sob beneath the poet's hand, nor irritate the wounds we can't forget in our bitter sleep. It's not the Promised Land. Our souls don't calculate its worth as a commodity to be sold and bought; sick, and poor, and silent on this earth, often we don't give it a thought. Yes, for us it's the dirt on our galoshes, yes, for us it's the grit between our teeth. Dust, and we grind and crumble and crush it, the gentle and unimplicated earth. But we'll lie in it, become its weeds and flowers, so unembarrassedly we call it - ours.

Muse When at night I wait for her to come, Life, it seems, hangs by a single strand. What are glory, youth, freedom, in comparison with the dear welcome guest, a flute in hand? She enters now. Pushing her veil aside, she stares through me with her attentiveness. I question her: 'And were you Dante's guide, dictating the Inferno?' She answers: 'Yes.

Flüt çalacağım bugün kendi öz omurgamla

See this cypress cross? By this one That you know so well, I swear: All will awaken - you just whistle By my window there.

To a Familiar Genius Flying By Reveal yourself, anonymous enchanter! What heaven hastens you to me? Why draw me to that promised land again That I gave up so long ago? Was it not you who in my youth Enchanted me with such sweet dreams, Did you not whisper, long ago, Dear hopes of a guests ethereal? Was it not you through whom all lived In golden days, in happy lands Of fragrant meadows, waters bright, Where days were merry ?neath clear skies? Was it not you who breathed into my vernal breast Some melancholy mysteries Tormenting it with keen desire Exciting it to anxious joy? Was it not you who bore my soul aloft Upon the inspiration of your sacred verse, Who flamed before me like a holy vision, Initiating me into life's beauty? In hours lost, hours of secret grief, Did you not always murmur to my heart, With happy comfort soothe it And nurture it with quiet hope? Did not my soul forever heed you In all the purest moments of my life When'ere it glimpsed fate's sacred essence With only God to witness it? What news bring you, O, my enchantress? Or will you once more call in dreams Awaken futile thoughts of old, Whisper of joy and then fall silent? O spirit, bide with me awhile; O, faithful friend, haste not away; Stay, please become my earthly life, O, Guardian angel of my soul.

Carlo’s basement apartment was on Grant Street in an old red-brick rooming house near a church. You went down an alley, down some stone steps, opened an old raw door, and went through a kind of cellar till you came to his board door. It was like the room of a Russian saint: one bed, a candle burning, stone walls that oozed moisture, and a crazy makeshift ikon of some kind that he had made. He read me his poetry.

God is unkind to gardeners and reapers. Slanted rain coils and falls from up high And the wide raincoats catch water, That once had reflected the sky. In underwater realm are fields and meadows And the free currents sing a lot, Plums rupture on bloated branches And grass strands, lying down, rot. And through the dense and watery net I see your darling face, A quiet park, a round porch And a Chinese arbour-place.

Whether to look for you on earth -- I don't know if you're dead or you live -- Or about you in the evening I should for you, departed, grieve. All is for you: and the daily prayer And the sleeplessness' swooning flame And the white flock of my poems And my eyes' blue violent flame. No one was dearer to me, no one, No one left me this bereft, Not even he who betrayed me to torment, Not even he who caressed, then left.

So many requests, always, from a lover! None when they fall out of love. I'm glad the water does not move under the colourless ice of the river. And I'll stand - God help me! - on this ice, however light and brittle it is, and you...take care of our letters, that our descendants not misjudge us, That they may read and understand more clearly what you are, wise, brave. In your glorious biography No row of dots should stand. Earth's drink is much too sweet, love's nets too close together. May my name be in the textbooks of children playing in the street. When they've read my grievous story, may they smile behind their desklids... If I can't have love, if I can't find peace, give me a bitter glory. 1913

The Wedding Ring Although the lamp was out, above its darkness I saw the bright reflection of a flame. My soul is bare, stripped to the purest bareness; It has escaped, transcended all its bounds. A man, I held desire my dearest treasure. but I give it, myself, my sacred pain, my prayers, my ecstasies - all these, O Father, I give with love to You, most loving one. And so the hour of limitless surrender enclosed me in a cloak of flames like wings; empowered me with the power of Your commandment, and clothed me in Your holy veil of fire. So let me stretch my hand out to my brother; I look in the Face of You, the Fount of Life, and in the radiance of transfigured torture I bear my cross, light as a wedding ring.

Lot's Wife And the just man trailed God's messenger, his huge, light shape devoured the black hill. But uneasiness shadowed is wife and spoke to her: 'It's not too late, you can look back still At the red towers of Sodom, the place that bore you, the square in which you sang, the spinning-shed, at the empty windows of that upper storey where children blessed your happy marriage-bed.' Her eyes that were still turning when a bolt of pain shot through them, were instantly blind; her body turned into transparent salt, and her swift legs were rooted to the ground. Who mourns one woman in a holocaust? Surely her death has no significance? Yet in my heart she never will be lost, she who gave up her life to steal one glance. 1922-24

In intimacy there exists a line That can't be crossed by passion or love's art -- In awful silence lips melt into one And out of love to pieces bursts the heart. And friendship here is impotent, and years Of happiness sublime in fire aglow, When soul is free and does not hear The dulling of sweet passion, long and slow. Those who are striving toward it are in fever, But those that reach it struck with woe that lingers. Now you have understood, why forever My heart does not beat underneath your fingers.

A Baby Elephant Right now my love for you is a baby elephant Born in Berlin or in Paris, And treading with its cushioned feet Around the zoo director's house. Do not offer it French pastries, Do not offer it cabbage heads, It can eat only sections of tangerines, Or lumps of sugar and pieces of candy. Don't cry, my sweet, because it will be put Into a narrow cage, become a joke for mobs, When salesman blow cigar smoke into its trunk To the cackles of their girl friends. Don't imagine, my dear, that the day will come When, infuriated, it will snap its chains And rush along the streets, Crushing howling people like a bus. No, may you dream of it at dawn, Clad in bronze and brocade and ostrich feathers, Like that magnificent beast which once Bore Hannibal to trembling Rome.

Death that makes nature quake with dread! today we are gods, tomorrow dust, creatures of poverty and pride, today hope fondly flatters us, tomorrow – man, where are you now? Your hours have barely fled away into the pit of chaos, your time fades like a dream at the new day.

Later, when his desires had been satisfied, he slept in an odorous whorehouse, snoring lustily next to an insomniac tart, and dreamed. He could dream in seven languages: Italian, Spanic, Arabic, Persian, Russian, English and Portughese. He had picked up languages the way most sailors picked up diseases; languages were his gonorrhea, his syphilis, his scurvy, his ague,his plague. As soon as he fell asleep half the world started babbling in his brain, telling wondrous travelers' tales. In this half-discovered world every day brought news of fresh enchantments. The visionary, revelatory dream-poetry of the quotidian had not yet been crushed by blinkered, prosy fact. Himself a teller of tales, he had been driven out of his door by stories of wonder, and by one in particular, a story which could make his fortune or else cost him his life.

А потом… А потом, потом будет небо и тихая синева, потом, потом будет вера и падающая синева. Потом откроется правда, так жаль, что поздно уже, и будет тихой наградой птица сидеть на плече. И будет тихое небо и шелестящий покой, и будет тихой свирелью играть на рассвете прибой.

On the abyss’s edge we slide and soon will plunge head first; our life is given us with our death – and we, when we are born, begin to die. Without an ounce of pity, death strikes all things, brings to nothing stars, and suns are quenched by her cold breath – destroyer of the universe.

У меня в Москве — купола горят! У меня в Москве — колокола звонят! И гробницы в ряд у меня стоят, — В них царицы спят, и цари. И не знаешь ты, что зарёй в Кремле Легче дышится — чем на всей земле! И не знаешь ты, что зарёй в Кремле Я молюсь тебе — до зари! И проходишь ты над своей Невой О ту пору, как над рекой-Москвой Я стою с опущенной головой, И слипаются фонари. Всей бессонницей я тебя люблю, Всей бессонницей я тебе внемлю — О ту пору, как по всему Кремлю Просыпаются звонари… Но моя река — да с твоей рекой, Но моя рука — да с твоей рукой Не сойдутся, Радость моя, доколь Не догонит заря — зари. 7 мая 1916 At home in Moscow - where the domes are burning, at home in Moscow - in the sound of bells, where I live the tombs - in their rows are standing and in them Tsaritsas - are asleep and tsars. And you don't know how - at dawn the Kremlin is the easiest place to - breathe in the whole wide earth and you don't know when - dawn reaches the Kremlin I pray to you until - the next day comes and I go with you - by your river Neva even while beside - the Moscow river I am standing here - with my head lowered and the line of street lights - sticks fast together. With my insomnia - I love you wholly. With my insomnia - I listen for you, just at the hour throughout - the Kremlin, men who ring the bells - begin to waken, Still my river - and your river still my hand - and your hand will never join, or not until one dawn catches up another dawning.

Yellow and fresh are the lanterns, Black is the road of the garden at sea. I am very calm. Only please, do not Talk about him with me. You're tender and loyal, we'll be friends. . Have fun, kiss, together grow old. . And light months above us will fly like feathers, Like stars made of snow and as cold.

Гришка-Вор тебя не ополячил, Петр-Царь тебя не онемечил. Что же делаешь, голубка? — Плачу. Где же спесь твоя, Москва? — Далече. — Голубочки где твои? — Нет корму. — Кто унес его? — Да ворон черный. — Где кресты твои святые? — Сбиты. — Где сыны твои, Москва? — Убиты. 10 декабря 1917 Felon Grishka could not polonize you, and Tsar Peter could not germanize you. What are you about, my fairest? - Weeping. Moscow, where's that ancient pride? - Far sleeping. - Where are all your doves? - No food to save them. - Who made off with it? - The coal-black raven. - And your holy crosses? - Ripped asunder. - Moscow, and your sons? - Slain in their hundreds.

Это просто, как кровь и пот: Царь — народу, царю — народ. Это ясно, как тайна двух: Двое рядом, а третий — Дух. Царь с небес на престол взведён: Это чисто, как снег и сон. Царь опять на престол взойдёт — Это свято, как кровь и пот. 7 мая 1918, 3-ий день Пасхи (а оставалось ему жить меньше трёх месяцев!) It is simple, as blood and sweat: Tsar and people - in destiny wed. It is clear, as a secret shared Between two, an the Spirit- the third. Heaven summoned the tsar to his throne: It is spotless, as sleep as snow. And the tsar shall regain his throne yet: It is sacred, as blood and sweat. 24th April 1918 3rd day of Easter (and he had - less than three months to live!)

How I love, how I loved to stare At the ironclad shores, On the balcony, where forever No foot stepped, not mine, not yours. And in truth you are -- a capital For the mad and luminous us; But when over Nieva sail Those special, pure hours And the winds of May fly over You past the iron beams You are like a dying sinner Seeing heavenly dreams...

Кто уцелел — умрёт, кто мёртв — воспрянет. И вот потомки, вспомнив старину: — Где были вы? — Вопрос как громом грянет, Ответ как громом грянет: — На Дону! — Что делали? — Да принимали муки, Потом устали и легли на сон. И в словаре задумчивые внуки За словом: «долг» напишут слово: «Дон». 30 марта 1918 Those spared - will die, those fallen - rise from under. Then come the sons, remembering days far gone: - And where were you? - the words will roll like thunder, The answer roll like thunder: - On the Don! - What did you do? - We bore with grief and cruelty, Then laid us down to sleep, our last strength gone. And in the dictionary, over Duty, The grandsons, looking back, will write: the Don.

Slavery has been outlawed in most arab countries for years now but there are villages in jordan made up entirely of descendants of runaway Saudi slaves. Abdulrahman knows he might be free, but hes still an arab. No one ever wants to be the arab - its too old and too tragic, too mysterious and too exasperating, and too lonely for anyone but an actual arab to put up with for very long. Essentially, its an image problem. Ask anyone, Persian, Turks, even Lebanese and Egyptians - none of them want to be the arab. They say things like, well, really we're indo-russian-asian european- chaldeans, so in the end the only one who gets to be the arab is the same little old bedouin with his goats and his sheep and his poetry about his goats and his sheep, because he doesnt know that he's the arab, and what he doesnt know wont hurt him.

The Mercy The ship that took my mother to Ellis Island eighty-three years ago was named "The Mercy." She remembers trying to eat a banana without first peeling it and seeing her first orange in the hands of a young Scot, a seaman who gave her a bite and wiped her mouth for her with a red bandana and taught her the word, "orange," saying it patiently over and over. A long autumn voyage, the days darkening with the black waters calming as night came on, then nothing as far as her eyes could see and space without limit rushing off to the corners of creation. She prayed in Russian and Yiddish to find her family in New York, prayers unheard or misunderstood or perhaps ignored by all the powers that swept the waves of darkness before she woke, that kept "The Mercy" afloat while smallpox raged among the passengers and crew until the dead were buried at sea with strange prayers in a tongue she could not fathom. "The Mercy," I read on the yellowing pages of a book I located in a windowless room of the library on 42nd Street, sat thirty-one days offshore in quarantine before the passengers disembarked. There a story ends. Other ships arrived, "Tancred" out of Glasgow, "The Neptune" registered as Danish, "Umberto IV," the list goes on for pages, November gives way to winter, the sea pounds this alien shore. Italian miners from Piemonte dig under towns in western Pennsylvania only to rediscover the same nightmare they left at home. A nine-year-old girl travels all night by train with one suitcase and an orange. She learns that mercy is something you can eat again and again while the juice spills over your chin, you can wipe it away with the back of your hands and you can never get enough.

Дорожкою простонародною, Смиренною, богоугодною, Идём — свободные, немодные, Душой и телом — благородные. Сбылися древние пророчества: Где вы — Величества? Высочества? Мать с дочерью идём — две странницы. Чернь чёрная навстречу чванится. Быть может — вздох от нас останется, А может — Бог на нас оглянется… Пусть будет — как Ему захочется: Мы не Величества, Высочества. Так, скромные, богоугодные, Душой и телом — благородные, Дорожкою простонародною — Так, доченька, к себе на родину: В страну Мечты и Одиночества — Где мы — Величества, Высочества. 1919 The path of plain folk, of simplicity, we tread, God-fearing, with humility - outmoded garb, we guard our liberty, in mind and body - pure nobility. Thus spake the prophets, of proud dynasties: Where are ye - Majesties? and Highnesses? So, mother, daughter - two lone wanderers. The churlish mob surge, chiding, on at us. Maybe - some breath will yet remain of us, And maybe - God look back again on us... His will be done, the Lord of Righteousness: we are no Majesties, no Highnesses. Let us, God-fearing, with humility, In mind and body - pure nobility, turn homeward, daughter - tread submissively the path of plain folk, of simplicity: Back to the land of Dreams and Loneliness - where we - are Majesties, and Highnesses.

We observe in this torrent of incoherence a lack of regularity in the subject himself; the "I" has fallen to pieces after struggling for three centuries against the great objective institutions and dissolving them with its subjectivism and rejecting in them any law that was sacred and binding on itself. There is no reason to think that Decadence - obviously an historical phenomenon of great inevitability and significance — has confined itself to poetry; we should expect in the more or less distant future the Decadence of philosophy and finally the Decadence of morality, politics, and forms of communal life. To a certain extent Nietzsche can already be considered the Decadent of human thought — at least to the extent that Maupassant, in certain "final touches" of his art, can be considered the Decadent of human emotion. Like Maupassant, Nietzsche ended in madness; and in Nietzsche, just as in Maupassant, the cult of the "I" loses all restraining limits: the world, history, and the human being with his toils and legitimate demands have disappeared equally from the works of both; both were "mystic males" to a considerable degree, only one of them preferred to "flutter " above "quivering orchids," whereas the other liked to sit inside a cave or upon a mountaintop and proclaim a new religion to mankind in his capacity as the reborn "Zarathustra." The religion of the "superman," he explained. But all of them, including Maupassant, were already "supermen" in that they had absolutely no need of mankind and mankind had absolutely no need of them. On this new type of nisus formativus of human culture, so to speak, we should expect to see great oddities, great hideousness, and perhaps great calamities and dangers. ("On Symbolists And Decadents")

Надобно смело признаться, Лира! Мы тяготели к великим мира: Мачтам, знаменам, церквам, царям, Бардам, героям, орлам и старцам, Так, присягнувши на верность — царствам, Не доверяют Шатра — ветрам. Знаешь царя — так псаря не жалуй! Верность как якорем нас держала: Верность величью — вине — беде, Верность великой вине венчанной! Так, присягнувши на верность — Хану, Не присягают его орде. Ветреный век мы застали, Лира! Ветер в клоки изодрав мундиры, Треплет последний лоскут Шатра… Новые толпы — иные флаги! Мы ж остаемся верны присяге, Ибо дурные вожди — ветра. 14 августа 1918 Better, my Lyre, to confess it freely! It was the great ever stirred our feelings: masts, battle ensigns, churches, and kings, bards, epic heroes, eagles, and elders. Those that are pledged to the realm, like soldiers, do not confide their Tent - to the winds. You know the Tsar - do not toy with the hunter! Loyalty has held us, firm as an anchor: loyalty to greatness - to guilt - to grief, to the great crowned guilt - loyalty unswerving! Those that are pledged to the Khan will serve him - their oath is not to the horde, but its chief. We struck a fickle age, Lyre, that scatters all to the winds! Uniforms ripped to tatters, and the last shreds of the Tent worn thin... New crowds collecting - other flags waving! But we still stand by our word - unwavering, for they are devious captains - the winds.

There are Four of Us I have turned aside from everything, from the whole earthly store. The spirit and guardian of this place is an old tree-stump in water. We are brief guests of the earth, as it were, and life is a habit we put on. On paths of air I seem to overhear two friendly voices, talking in turn. Did I say two?...There by the east wall's tangle of raspberry, is a branch of elder, dark and fresh. Why! It's a letter from Marina. November 1962 (in delirium)

За Отрока — за Голубя — за Сына, За царевича младого Алексия Помолись, церковная Россия! Очи ангельские вытри, Вспомяни, как пал на плиты Голубь углицкий — Димитрий. Ласковая ты, Россия, матерь! Ах, ужели у тебя не хватит На него — любовной благодати? Грех отцовский не карай на сыне. Сохрани, крестьянская Россия, Царскосельского ягнёнка — Алексия! 4 апреля 1917, третий день Пасхи Pray for the Son - the Dove - the Adolescent, For the young Tsarevich, for the young Alexis - Russia, pray, who the true faith confessest! Wipe those angel eyes now, ponder deeply Him that fell upon the stones - think meetly On the dove of Uglich, on Dimitri. Gentle mother, Russia, kind, caressing! Is thy heart so hard as not to grace him With thy loving-kindness, with thy blessing? Visit not upon the son the father's trespass. Russia of the country folk - be his protectress: Spare the lamb of Tsarskoye Selo, Alexis! 4 April 1917 Third day of Easter

Archaeology, Concrete Poetry, Media and Communications, Festival and Theatre Administration, Comparative Religion, Stage Set and Design, the Russian Short Story, Politics and Gender. On finishing his studies – and it was never entirely clear when and whether he had finished his studies, on account of no one at the university being certain how many modules made a totality – Treslove found himself with a degree so unspecific that all he could do with it was accept a graduate traineeship at the BBC.

Between land and sea the mist was like a veil This is a simile. Such links as "like" or "as" are typical of the simile: one object is like another object. If you go on to say the mist was like the veil of a bride, this is a sustained simile with elements of mild poetry; but if you say, the mist was like the veil of a fat bride whose father was even fatter and wore a wig, this is a rambling simile, marred by an illogical continuation, of the kind Homer used for purposes of epic narration and Gogol used for grotesque dream-effects.

Швея Уж третий день ни с кем не говорю... А мысли — жадные и злые. Болит спина; куда ни посмотрю — Повсюду пятна голубые. Церковный колокол гудел; умолк; Я всё наедине с собою. Скрипит и гнется жарко-алый шелк Под неумелою иглою. На всех явлениях лежит печать. Одно с другим как будто слито. Приняв одно — стараюсь угадать За ним другое, — то, что скрыто. И этот шелк мне кажется — Огнем. И вот уж не огнем — а Кровью. А кровь — лишь знак того, что мы зовем На бедном языке — Любовью. Любовь — лишь звук... Но в этот поздний час Того, что дальше, — не открою. Нет, не огонь, не кровь... а лишь атлас Скрипит под робкою иглою. The Seamstress For two days I have not said a word... Spiteful thoughts gnaw me. My back hurts; wherever I look blue spots are floating. The church bell booms out for a while, then stops. I am left to myself. The scarlet silk squeaks and slips as it suffers my hesitant stitches. All things flow into each other, but each has a mark of its own; I fasten on objects, and wonder What may lie hidden beyond. The silk flares up in flames, then turns to a pool of blood; 'love' is our paltry word for the blood language cannot name. 'Love' is a meaningless sound... But I shall see no more now, it is late: Not fire or blood, but silk suffers my hesitant stitches

Белая гвардия, путь твой высок: Черному дулу — грудь и висок. Божье да белое твое дело: Белое тело твое — в песок. Не лебедей это в небе стая: Белогвардейская рать святая Белым видением тает, тает… Старого мира — последний сон: Молодость — Доблесть — Вандея — Дон. 24 марта 1918 White Guard, your path is set noble and high: Black muzzles - your breast and temple defy. Godly and white is the cause you fight for: White is your body - in sands to lie. That is no flock of swans in the sky there: Saintly the White Guard host sails by there, White, as a vision, to fade and die there... One last glimpse of a world that's gone: Manliness - Daring - Vendée - Don.

Жираф Сегодня, я вижу, особенно грустен твой взгляд, И руки особенно тонки, колени обняв. Послушай: далёко, далёко на озере Чад Изысканный бродит жираф. Ему грациозная стройность и нега дана, И шкуру его украшает волшебный узор, С которым равняться осмелиться только Луна, Дробясь и качаясь на влаге широких озёр. Вдали он подобен цветным парусам корабля, И бег его плавен, как радостный птичий полёт. Я знаю, что много чудесного видит земля, Когда на закате он прячется в мраморный грот. Я знаю весёлые сказки таинственных стран Про чёрную деву, про страсть молодого вождя, Но ты слишком долго вдыхала тяжёлый туман, Ты верить не хочешь во что-нибудь, кроме дождя. И как я тебе расскажу про тропический сад, Про стройный пальмы, про запах немыслимых трав... Ты плачешь? Послушай... далёко, на озере Чад Изысканный бродит жираф. The Giraffe O, the look in your eyes this morning is more than usually sad, With your little arms wrapped round your knees and body bent in half. Let me tell you a story: far, far away, on the distant shores of Lake Chad, There roams a most majestic giraffe Blessed with a handsome build and graceful carriage And a coat painted hypnotic, magical patterns, With which none but the moon above dare compare When her light falls down to be scattered and rocked on the waters, Passing like a blazing sail far out at sea As she runs by, nimble and carefree as a bird in flight. I hear tell the earth has seen many wonderful things When the giraffe hides herself away and the sun sets into night. I know fabulous tales of far off, alien lands, Of a dark maiden, of a young captain’s burning desire, all this I know, But you’ve breathed in the damp marsh air for so long You don’t want to believe in anything but the rain out your window. I still haven’t told you about her tropic garden, with the slenderest palm trees, The sweetest wildflowers, meadows of unbelievable grass . . . Are you crying? Let me tell you a story: far away, on the distant shores of Lake Chad, There roams a most majestic giraffe.

I want to die young, neither loving nor grieving for anyone; to burst like a golden falling star, to shed my petals while still an unfaded flower. I want those wearied by hostility to find bliss twofold at my gravestone. I want to die young. Bury me to the side, away from the irritating and noisy road, there, where the pussy willow inclines to the waves, where the overgrown bushes grow yellow. So that the dreamy poppies may grow, so that the wind may breathe the fragrances of the distant earth over me. I want to die young. I don't look at the path I've travelled, at the madness of wasted years. I can doze untroubled, once I've sung my final hymn. Let the fire not completely fade; let there remain a memory of what aroused the heart's thirst for life. I want to die young.

University, organized on the Soviet system, was just like high school: daily classes from 9-2 p.m., daily written assignments; attendance strictly kept, no choice of courses beside the major. We studied Ukrainian, Russian grammar as well as literature. It sounds ridiculous, but we learned spelling in one lesson and had to read Pushkin, in the original text, next period. The same was repeated with Ukrainian spelling, grammar and also the reading of poetry by Taras Shevchenko. That was similar to learning the verbs to be or to have and read also Shakespeare. (Actually, that was how I learned English in 1938.) The subjects that were most important: History of the Party and Dialectic Materialism. That had to be learned the way they explained it and no questions should be asked; no doubts were permitted.

A German or a Russian mamaloschen (mother tongue) pedigree made for two wildly different translations of the same verse by the American Yiddish poet H. Leyvik. "Dos turemdike lebn in der turemdike shtot", translated "The towering life of the towering city" (Yiddish turem, "tower," of German origin) became in another version "The imprisoned life of the prison city" (via turme, "prison", from Russian). I discovered this old "plot" in a recent lecture, a volume on American Yiddish Poetry, by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav. One of those gentle epiphanies that only apparently obscure footnotes or references could reveal. In a frivolous gesture, I concocted an improbable rendition based on both translations, a slice of contemporary universal metropolitan spleen: The imprisoned life of the towering city.

The great self-limitation practiced by man for ten centuries yielded, between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, the whole flower of the so-called "Renaissance." The root, usually, does not resemble the fruit in appearance, but there is an undeniable connection between the root's strength and juiciness and the beauty and taste of the fruit. The Middle Ages, it seems, have nothing in common with the Renaissance and are opposite to it in every way; nonetheless, all the abundance and ebullience of human energies during the Renaissance were based not at all on the supposedly "renascent" classical world, nor on the imitated Plato and Virgil, nor on manuscripts torn from the basements of old monasteries, but precisely on those monasteries, on those stern Franciscians and cruel Dominicans, on Saints Bonaventure, Anselm of Canterbury, and Bernard of Clairvaux. The Middle Ages were a great repository of human energies: in the medieval man's asceticism, self-abnegation, and contempt for his own beauty, his own energies, and his own mind, these energies, this heart, and this mind were stored up until the right time. The Renaissance was the epoch of the discovery of this trove: the thin layer of soil covering it was suddenly thrown aside, and to the amazement of following centuries dazzling, incalculable treasures glittered there; yesterday's pauper and wretched beggar, who only knew how to stand on crossroads and bellow psalms in an inharmonious voice, suddenly started to bloom with poetry, strength, beauty, and intelligence. Whence came all this? From the ancient world, which had exhausted its vital powers? From moldy parchments? But did Plato really write his dialogues with the same keen enjoyment with which Marsilio Ficino annotated them? And did the Romans, when reading the Greeks, really experience the same emotions as Petrarch, when, for ignorance of Greek, he could only move his precious manuscripts from place to place, kiss them now and then, and gaze sadly at their incomprehensible text? All these manuscripts, in convenient and accurate editions, lie before us too: why don't they lead us to a "renascence" among us? Why didn't the Greeks bring about a "renascence" in Rome? And why didn't Greco-Roman literature produce anything similar to the Italian Renaissance in Gaul and Africa from the second to the fourth century? The secret of the Renaissance of the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries does not lie in ancient literature: this literature was only the spade that threw the soil off the treasures buried underneath; the secret lies in the treasures themselves; in the fact that between the fourth and fourteenth centuries, under the influence of the strict ascetic ideal of mortifying the flesh and restraining the impulses of his spirit, man only stored up his energies and expended nothing. During this great thousand-year silence his soul matured for The Divine Comedy; during this forced closing of eyes to the world - an interesting, albeit sinful world-Galileo was maturing, Copernicus, and the school of careful experimentation founded by Bacon; during the struggle with the Moors the talents of Velasquez and Murillo were forged; and in the prayers of the thousand years leading up to the sixteenth century the Madonna images of that century were drawn, images to which we are able to pray but which no one is able to imitate. ("On Symbolists And Decadents")

Когда рыжеволосый Самозванец Тебя схватил — ты не согнула плеч. Где спесь твоя, княгинюшка? — Румянец, Красавица? — Разумница, — где речь? Как Пётр-Царь, презрев закон сыновний, Позарился на голову твою — Боярыней Морозовой на дровнях Ты отвечала Русскому Царю. Не позабыли огненного пойла Буонапарта хладные уста. Не в первый раз в твоих соборах — стойла. Всё вынесут кремлёвские бока. 9 декабря 1917 When the red-haired impostor, fell Dmitri, laid hold of you, you did not bow the knee. Where is your pride, my princess? - Where, my beauty? The rosy cheeks? the voice once wise and free? And when Tsar Peter, coveting your beauty, made to ride roughshod over filial law - Morozova showed you the path of duty: she was your answer to the Russian Tsar. And Bonaparte's cold lips cannot forget still The fiery draught you set before him then. Once more now your cathedrals serve for stables. The Kremlin's flanks will soldier to the end.

Я не знаю, зачем упрекают меня, Что в созданьях моих слишком много огня, Что стремлюсь я навстречу живому лучу И наветам унынья внимать не хочу. Что блещу я царицей в нарядных стихах, С диадемой на пышных моих волосах, Что из рифм я себе ожерелье плету, Что пою я любовь, что пою красоту. Но бессмертья я смертью своей не куплю, И для песен я звонкие песни люблю. И безумью ничтожных мечтаний моих Не изменит мой жгучий, мой женственный стих. I do not know why they reproach me for having too much fire in my poems, for striving to meet the lively sunbeam and refusing to heed the accusations of gloom. For shining like a tsarina in my elegant verses, with a diadem on my opulent hair, for weaving myself a necklace of rhymes, for singing of love, for singing of beauty. I will not buy immortality with my death. And as for songs, I love melodious ones. And the insanity of my petty dreams will be voiced in my passionate, feminine verse. 1898

Lalla Ruk Dearest dream, my soul's enchantment Lovely guest from heav'n above, Most benevolent attender To the earthly realm below, You gave me blissful satisfaction Momentary but complete: Bringing with you happy tidings - Like a herald from the skies. I dreamed dreams of life eternal In that Promised Land of peace; I dreamed dreams of fragrant regions, Of a tranquil, sweet Kashmir; I could witness celebrations, Festivals of roses vernal Honoring that lovely maiden From lands strange and far away. And, with glistening enchantment Like an angel from above, - This untainted, youthful vision Came before my dreaming eyes; Like a veil, a shining shroud Screened her lovely face from view, Tenderly she did incline Her shy gazes toward the earth. All her traits - her timid shyness Underneath her shining crown, Childlike her animation, And her face's noble beauty - Glowing with a depth of feeling, Sweet serenity and peace - All of these completely artless Indescribably sublime! As I watched, the apparition (Captivating me in passing) Never to return, flew by; I pursued - but it had gone! T'was a vision merely fleeting, Transient illumination Leaving nothing but a legend Of its passing through my life! T'is not ours to harbor Beauty's spirit - Ah, so pure! It comes nigh but for a moment From its heavenly abode; Like a dream, it slips away, Like an airy dream of morning: But in sacred reminiscence It is married with the heart! Only in the purest instants Of our life does it appear Bringing with it revelations Beneficial to our hearts; That our hearts may know of heaven In this earthly shadow realm, It allows us momentary Glimpses through the earthly veil. And through all that here is lovely, All that animates our lives, To our souls it speaks a language Reassuring and distinct; When it quits our earthly region It bestows a gift of love Glowing in our evening heaven: "Tis a farewell star for all to see.

What matters is the need to move from the rigidity of national stereotypes towards something more truly human; what matters is to discover the riches of human hearts and souls; what matters is the human content of poetry and science, the universal charm and beauty of architecture; what matters is the magnanimity of a nation's leaders and historical figures. only by exalting what is truly human, only by fusing the national with what is universally human, can try dignity - and true freedom - be achieved. It is the struggle for freedom of thought and expression, the struggle for a peasant's freedom to sow what he wants to sow, for everyone's freedom to enjoy the fruits of their own work - this is the true struggle for national dignity. The only real triumph of national freedom is one that brings about the triumph of all human freedom. For small nations and large nations alike, this is the only way forward. And it goes without saying that the Russians too - as well as Armenians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Kalmyks and Uzbeks - must understand that it is precisely through renouncing the idea of their own national superiority that they can truly affirm the grandeur and dignity of their own people, of their own literature and science.

Брачное кольцо Над темностью лампады незажженной Я увидал сияющий отсвет. Последним обнаженьем обнаженной Моей душе — пределов больше нет. Желанья были мне всего дороже... Но их, себя, святую боль мою, Молитвы, упованья, — всё, о Боже, В Твою Любовь с любовью отдаю. И этот час бездонного смиренья Крылатым пламенем облек меня. Я властен властью — Твоего веленья, Одет покровом — Твоего огня. Я к близкому протягиваю руки, Тебе, Живому, я смотрю в Лицо, И, в светлости преображенной муки, Мне легок крест, как брачное кольцо. The Wedding Ring Although the lamp was out, above its darkness I saw the bright reflection of a flame. My soul is bare, stripped to the purest bareness; It has escaped, transcended all its bounds. A man, I held desire my dearest treasure. but I give it, myself, my sacred pain, my prayers, my ecstasies - all these, O Father, I give with love to You, most loving one. And so the hour of limitless surrender enclosed me in a cloak of flames like wings; empowered me with the power of Your commandment, and clothed me in Your holy veil of fire. So let me stretch my hand out to my brother; I look in the Face of You, the Fount of Life, and in the radiance of transfigured torture I bear my cross, light as a wedding ring.

The Mysterious Visitor Spirit, lovely guest, who are you? Whence have you flown down to us? Taciturn and without a sound Why have you abandoned us? Where are you? Where is your dwelling? What are you, where did you go? Why did you appear, Heavenly, upon the Earth? Mayhap you are youthful Hope, Who arrives from time to time Cloaked in magic From a land unknown? Merciless as Hope, Sweetest joy you show us For a moment, then Take it back and fly away. Was it Love that you enacted For us all in mystery? . . . Days of love, when one beloved Rendered this world beautiful Ah! then, sighted through the veil Earth did seem unearthly... Now the veil has lifted; Love is gone; Life is empty, joy - a dream. Was it Thought, enchanting You embodied for us here? Far removed from every worry, With a dreamy finger pointing To her lips, she sallies forth Just like you, from time to time, Ushers us without a sound Back to bygone days. Or within you dwells the sacred spirit Of Dame Poetry? . . . Just like you, she came from Heaven Veiling us twofold: Using azure for the skies, And clear white for earth; What lies near is lovely through her; All that's distant - known. Or perhaps 'twas premonition That descended in your guise And to us with clarity described All that's sacred and divine? Thus it often happens in this life: Something brilliant flies to meet us, Raises up the veil And then beckons us beyond.

Коли в землю солдаты всадили — штык, Коли красною тряпкой затмили — Лик*, Коли Бог под ударами — глух и нем, Коль на Пасху народ не пустили в Кремль — Надо бражникам старым засесть за холст, Рыбам — петь, бабам — умствовать, птицам — ползть, Конь на всаднике должен скакать верхом, Новорожденных надо поить вином**, Реки — жечь, мертвецов выносить — в окно, Солнце красное в полночь всходить должно, Имя суженой должен забыть жених… Государыням нужно любить — простых***. 3-ий день Пасхи 1918 *Красный флаг, к<отор>ым завесили лик Николая Чудотворца. Продолжение — известно (примеч. М. Цветаевой).↵ **Поили: г<оспо>жу де Жанлис. В Бургундии. Называлось «la miaulée». И жила, кажется, до 90-ста лет. Но был ужасная лицемерка (примеч. М. Цветаевой).↵ ***Любили (примеч. М. Цветаевой).↵ Now that the troops stick their bayonets - in the earth, that they wrap the Saint's Face - in a scarlet cloth, That, in face of these blows, God is - deaf and dumb, That at Easter the Kremlin admits no one - We shall soon see old revellers ply the loom, Fishes - sing, old wives - meditate, birds - creep, soon see the steed mount its rider and race away, see them start feeding wine to the new-born babe, Rivers - burn, windows - open to pass the dead, on the stroke of midnight - the sun rise, blood-red, the fiancé forget his beloved's name... and tsarinas - love commoners once again*. Third day of Easter, 1918 *They did love them (M.S.)

Серафимы I Резнею кровавой на время насытясь, Устали и слуги, и доблестный витязь И входят под своды обители Божьей, Где теплятся свечи Господних подножий. И с кроткой улыбкой со стен базилики Глядят серафимов блаженные лики. II Палач утомленный уснул на мгновенье. Подвешенной жертвы растет исступленье. На дыбе трепещет избитое тело, Медлительным пыткам не видно предела. А там, над землею, над тьмою кромешной, Парят серафимы с улыбкой безгрешной. III В глубоком «in pace», без воли и силы, Монахиня бьется о камни могилы. В холодную яму, где крысы и плесень, Доносится отзвук божественных песен. То – с гулом органа, в куреньях незримы, «Осанна! Осанна!» поют серафимы. The Seraphim I Gorged for a time with bloody slaughter, both servants and valorous hero are weary and enter the dome of God's dwelling, where candles glimmer at the Master's feet, and from the basilica's walls, with gentle smiles, gaze the blissful faces of the Seraphim. II The weary executioner has dozed for an instant. The hung victim's frenzy grows. A beaten body quivers on the rack, no limit to these slow tortures is seen. But there, above the earth, above this pitch darkness, soar the Seraphim with innocent smiles. III With deep "in pace" lacking strength and will, a nun beats against the stones of a grave. The echo of heavenly songs is heard in that cold pit, with rats and mould. But beyond - with the organ's roar, unseen in clouds of incense, "Hosanna, Hosanna!" sing the Seraphim.