«Return to my city, dearer to me than tears, / to its veins, the swollen glands of childhood nights, / return, remembering — swallow, O quickly then / the codliver oil of Leningrad’s rivered lights. / Recognize swiftly that small day of December: / see, in the sinister asphalt, egg yolk...»
«Depriving me of sea, of a space to run and space to fly, / And giving my footsteps the brace of a forced land. / What have you gained? The calculation dazzles. / But you cannot seize the movement of my lips, their silent sound.»
«Under such blows / your narrow shoulders will redden / and flame, even in the snow. Your childlike hands / will lift up irons / and weave the heaviest ropes. Barefoot on glass / your slight feet will go, / barefoot on glass in the blooded sand. And I will bum for you / like a black ...»
«Somehow we got through the miles of Moscow, / left the Sparrow Hills, and found the small, familiar church. / Our open sled was filled with straw, and roughly hooded / with coarse, frozen cloth that hurt us. Then in Uglitch the children played knucklebones. / When we drove through it, I rea...»