1963

Poet in Russia more than a poet

A poet in Russia is more than a poet. Poets are destined to be born in it only to those in whom the proud spirit of citizenship roams, to whom there is no comfort, there is no peace.

The poet in her is the image of his century and the future a ghostly prototype. The poet fails without falling into timidity, the result of everything that came before it.

Will I be able to? Culture is missing... The acquisition of prophecies does not promise... But the spirit of Russia hovers over me and orders you to try boldly.

And, quietly kneeling down, ready for both death and victory, I humbly ask for your help, great Russian poets...

Give me, Pushkin, your melodiousness, his uninhibited speech, his captivating fate - as if naughty, with the verb to burn.

Give me, Lermontov, your bilious glance, your contempt is poison and the cell of a closed soul, where it breathes, hidden in silence, your unkindness sister - lamp of secret goodness.

Let me, Nekrasov, calm down my playfulness, the pain of your cut muse - at the front entrances and rails and in the vastness of forests and fields. Give your inelegance strength. Give me your painful feat, to go, dragging all of Russia, like barge haulers walking along a towline.

Oh, give me, Blok, the prophetic nebula and two heeling wings, so that, concealing an eternal riddle, music flowed through the body.

Give, Pasternak, shift of days, confusion of branches, fusion of smells, shadows with the torment of the century, so that the word, muttering in the garden, bloomed and matured so that your candle will forever it was burning inside me.

Yesenin, give me tenderness for happiness to birch trees and meadows, to animals and people and to everything else on earth, that you and I love so defenselessly.

Give it to me, Mayakovsky lumpiness, riot, bass, menacing intransigence towards scum, so that I can too, cutting through time, talk about him fellow descendants...