646: Poetry Time

Poetry: a medium for the realist, the escapist, the romantic, the broken-hearted or even the optimist.

Though frequently baffled by the likes of Shakespeare, Donne, Shelley, Eliot and many others, I am still drawn from time to time by poetry.  This time here's a piece from one of Russia's greatest writers, Alexander S. Pushkin; it has the title Outlived Desire:

Outlived desire now departs,

My dreams I cannot love again;

I reap the fruit of empty hearts,

The fruit of pain.

The tempests of a cruel fate

My fair and flowery garlands rend;

Unhappy and alone I wait;

When comes the end?

So, stricken by the early cold,

The whistling, bitter gales of grief,

Still the autumn branches hold

One shuddering leaf.

(Tr. Frances Cornford and E. Polianowsky Salaman)

 

If the above suggests to you a particular mood on my part, then I can assure you that you are entirely correct.

Until the next time