Sergey Esenin
Stanzas

I know a lot
about my talent.
Poetry—there isn’t much to it.
More than anything though
it was love for the place
I was born in wearied,
tortured, burned me out...

Turn out a rhyme —
for Christ’s sake anyone can do it —
girls, the stars, the moon.
But another emotion altogether
gnaws at my heart,
different dreams
oppress my skull.

I want to be citizen
and bard,
a pride and example,
a real son,
not a bastard
to the great Soviet state.

For a long time I fled Moscow.
I have no art
in handling the police:
after every drunken scandal
they held me
in a cell.

I thank those good citizens for their friendship.
But really
to sleep on a hard bench
and in a drunken voice
to read some poem
about the caging
of an unhappy canary —
that’s no fun.

I’m not a canary —
I'm a poet!
I’m not what Demyan writes
even if I am sometimes drunk
— in return for that, my eyes shine
with the light of wild recoveries.

I see everything
and understand clearly
this new era is
not a pound of raisins to you,
that the name ofLenin
resounds like the wind

about the world,
generating thoughts
like the sails of a windmill.

Turn, turn, dear sails!
A benefit is promised you.
I am a nephew to you —
you are my uncles.
Come on, Esenin,
let’s sit quietly at our Marx,
guessing at the wisdom
of his boring lines.

The days like rivulets
run into the misty river.
The cities flash by
like letters across paper.
Not long ago it was Moscow,
today I’m in Baku.
Tchagin dedicates
an industrial poem to us.

‘Look’, he says, ‘aren’t
these gushers of oil, fountains
of oil, better than churches—
We’ve had enough mystic mist.
Poet, sing what
is living and mighty!’

There is oil on the water
like a Persian blanket.
Evening has spread a veil
of stars across the sky.
Yet I am ready
with a pure heart to swear
that street lighting in Baku
is better than the stars.

I’m possessed by thoughts
of industrial power.
I hear the voice of human strength.
We’ve had enough
of these celestial lights —
it’s easier for us
to build this on earth.

And looking myself straight
in the eye, I say:
‘Our time has come.

Come on, Esenin,
let’s sit quietly at our Marx
and guess
at the depth of his boring lines.’

Translated by Geoffrey Thurley