Sergey Esenin
Letter to my Wife

You remember
of course; you remember
Everything, — how I stood
Close to the wall, and you
walked about excitedly
and threw something
sharp in my face.

You said, it was time
for us to part, my crazy life
had worn you out,
it was time you took things in hand;
as for me, my lot
was to roll on,
downwards.

Darling,
you never loved me.
You didn’t see that I was like a horse
dripping with lather, driven
through the human hordes
spurred by a ruthless rider.
You did not see
That I am in dense smoke,
And the shattering of events
That torture me because I do not understand
Where this century of events is taking us.

Face jammed to face,
the face we do not see.
Much is revealed with distance.
When the calm ocean surface boils
The ship falls on rough times.

The earth is a ship
And someone, suddenly,
For the sake of a new life, a new glory,
Seizes the tiller, and drives her
Hard into the thick of storm and tempest.

Now, which of us, standing up on deck,
did not fall down, blench, and curse ?
Few are the seasoned souls
Who stay fast in the turmoil.
Then it was that I,
In the wild din, but ripe for work,
Went down into the hold,
Out of the stench of human vomit.

This hold was the Russian bar.
And there I bent over a pint glass
So that, suffering over no one,
I should destroy myself in the drunken fumes.

Darling,
I tortured you.
I saw despair
in your tired eyes
as I squandered myself haphazardly
before your eyes in stupid scandal.
But you did not see
that I lived in thick smoke,
and the shattering blast of things
which torture me because I do not understand
where this century is leading us.

Now years have passed.
I am in a different age.
I think and feel in different ways.

I raise this festive glass and say:
praise and glory to the helmsman!

Today I’m in the grip
of tender feelings.
I remember your sad fatigue
now I will try
to communicate to you
what I was
and what I have become.
Darling, I find it nice to say
I escaped a steep fall,
now I am the most violent
of the Soviets’ fellow-travellers.

I am not now
the man I was.
I would not torture you now
as once I did.
In the name of liberty
and glorious work
I’m ready to go to La Mancha.

Forgive me.
I know you are not that—
you live
with an earnest intelligent man.
You do not need our help,
nor do you need me,
not one particle of me.

Then live your life
as your star leads you
under a vault of shadow restored.
Greetings,
remembering you forever,
your
       Sergei.

Translated by Geoffrey Thurley