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:
- Prisoners poem – Yusef Komunyakaa poems | Poetry Monster
- Ballade of a Special Edition poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- To Joanna by William Wordsworth
- Олег Григорьев – Совершенно откровенно
- Василий Жуковский – На первое отречение от престола Бонапарте
- The Spider and the Ghost of the Fly by Vachel Lindsay
- Юлия Друнина – Зима, зима нагрянет скоро
- My Friend’s Light poem – Andrei Voznesensky poems
- Вера Павлова – Снежную бабочку-однодневку
- Yes, It Was The Mountain Echo by William Wordsworth
- Алексей Толстой – Василий Шибанов
- He’s on the porch by Yosa Buson
- The Saint And The Hunchback by William Butler Yeats
- These Green-Going-to-Yellow by Marvin Bell
- Unrequited Love – Why Can’t You Love Me Back?
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 Song Of The Kasak poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Roussalka poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Poet poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Memorial poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Last Flower poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The High Road In Winter poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Duel poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Delibash poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Coming Of Winter poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Coach Of Life poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Caucas poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Black Shawl poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Bakchesarian Fountain poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Tempest poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Tatiana’s Letter poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Solitude poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Remembrance poem – Alexander Pushkin
- On Count Voronstov poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Old Man poem – Alexander Pushkin
- O Sing, Fair Lady, When With Me poem – Alexander Pushkin
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.