Igor Severyanin
Selected Poems
Breathe in the Sunlight
Breathe in the sunlight, live with the sunlight - And with the sun you will glisten too! The earth will be warm in the living sunlight Of hearts that knew of the light and good. Breathe in the heaven, live with the heaven - And with the heaven will shine your eye. With love to earth will descend the heaven And world, forgiven, will meet the sky.Top
Envy Not Your Friend
Envy not your friend if he's more handsome, More intelligent or wealthier than you. Let his merits and let his successes Not tear up the laces on your shoe. Move along your way without a care, Smile still broader out of his success! Maybe he'll face darkness and despair And your porch will be adorned with bliss! Laugh with him, and cry with his distresses: Feel him with your heart, and for all time! Do not block your friend from his successes: It's a sin to do so! Truly, it's a crime!Top
Five Years Later
To you, Eugenia, who gave me happiness, I bring contrition, aflame and thorough... You loved and suffered, and now accept all this: Fathom my angst, fathom my sorrow. All life is broken, all life to bits is torn, In error of the youth - the curse forever... The dream has dried all up, because I kept you not, The life is crippled, the wing is severed... Forgive the one who calls, forgive the one who grieves - Perhaps a weakling, perhaps a genius... For past there is no need: In it the future lives - In future past exists .. Forgive, Eugenia!Top
Eight Lines Each
I
On the deck of the ship and behind mirror cabin You stand eating the seed of a plum like a squirrel. You are tender and delicate, so soft and fragile, A bit like a swallow and a bit like a girl. At the tiller, two sailors are smiling happily, And the captain romances, to you poems declaiming Of a cruiser mysterious, of the dove under cupolas, First invoking Daryalskaya, then invoking Morella.
II
In you, so much tenderness quiet, But dragging the time insanely, You hid it under the riot Of day crazy and full of sin. In movements of shoulder and belly And leaning over the buckwheat In you, so much tenderness quiet - If only for me she had been!
III
I will come to you in glory, Jewess, of the beaming stars. Be not woeful, do not worry: Simply fling the gate ajar! Pay back love with love, and so, On the traitor take revenge: On the hills - humps in a row - My corpse in a lake submerge.Top
It Took Place At The Sea
It took place at the sea, in the foam of the ocean, Where the carriage of city rarely arrives. In the tower of a palace the queen was playing Chopin, And to sound of Chopin the page fell in love. It was all very simple, it was all very dear: The page asked her to cut pomegranate in half, And she gave him a half, and the page she did tire, And to sound of sonatas the queen fell in love. And she later submitted, submitted with thunder, Like a slavegirl the queen slept the night till the day. It took place at the sea, where the turquoise waves wander, Where the page's sonatas and azure foam play.Top
The Sun And The Sea
Sun adores the sea, and sea adores the sun - Ocean waves the clear luminary are caressing, Loving, like a dream in amphora they drown - And then in the morning: Sun shines, incandescent. Sunshine will approve you, sun won't judge you ever, And again will trust him sea that is his lover... This has always been, and this will be forever, Only sea will never measure the sun's power!Top
You Will Not Return To Me
You will not return to me even for Tamara, For our little daughter, that sweet little thing: You have summer houses and you eat lobster now, You are under protection of a raven's wing. You will not return to me: Velvet dresses you wear; They the winglessness of tired shoulders disguise... You will not return to me: on the cards the soothsayer For a ruble put out the flash of final rays... You will not return to me, even to say so long - On the casket you'll wet the shawl in offense... You will not return to me in a dress made of cotton - Like a cheap flower, a quiet, joyful-pitiful dress. Like a flower... recall roses of muslin paper? Living have not a half word at a grave plate. You will not return to me: dreams are mages no longer - I will die all alone, do you understand that?Top
Spring Day
This day of spring is hot and golden - The city's blinded by the sun! I'm me again! I am emboldened! I'm in love, happy and I'm young! The soul sings and bursts for the fields and I come to strangers and say "hey." What spaciousness I feel! What freedom! What songs and flowers in my way! Soon - vanish into the young meadows! Soon - into snowdunes, full of bliss! To look in pink faces of women, Like friend, an enemy to kiss! Make noise, the springtime forests mighty! Bloom, lilac bushes! Grow tall, grass! No sinners: Everyone is righteous On a day so divinely blessed!Top
Fantasy of Sunrise
It's morning. The fish headlong lunges On hook in prattle of the dawn. Like music appears the Sun, and Like lilies awaken the swans. The Sun over a marble villa With blush of meeting turns red. Transparent singer of Seville is Singing "Titania" overhead. The devotees of Russian poetess Burn flowers for her like incense. The dreamers are always homeless... The dreamers in a patched dress... In face ingeniously sculpted - The untold beauty of goddess! Hymn to the sun sung by the master - "Hosanna" after "Hosanna"! Singing by exquisite ladies, Toasts sound after toasts. Garlands of smiles on their faces, Their figures swaying like stalks. All nests in muttering, mumbling - Trembling with diamonds is grass - Your palms clap daringly, lovingly - And to the sun swans will rise!Top
Oblivion in Sin
All joy - in the past, irretrievable and evanescent But in the present - prosperity and despair. The heart is tired and thirsts in fire at sunset Of love and passion - it's lured by freedom from care. The heart is tired of prosperity's narrow confines, It's in despair, in chains, in complete distress... Despairs to dream, and to trust, and in darkened numbness It pulses with sadness, in cast of laziness... And life charms and conjures, and with the trail Of family weekdays lures somewhere... To heart's chagrin: it fears with its betrayal To end its prosperity in sunset hour. It is empowered with motherhood and with loyalty, It fears to leave his loved ones like piteous orphans... But there's no unison, and it beats in loneliness And life passes, and it might tear the cold coffin. Oh heart, oh heart! Salvation is in your madness! While you can burn and beat, burn and keep beating! Sin braver! May do-gooder come way of mummies: In sin - oblivion! And there - no bullet or rail can reach me! You're loved, sick heart! You're loved, loved all out! Love in response! In greeting! Yes, love in ardor! And be at peace: Live - rightly! And vanquish doubt! Be joyful, heart: You're young! Beat loud and harder!Top
Champagne Polonez
Champagne in a lily! Champagne in a lily! With health and with wisdom it sparkles and shines! A shot of Mignon with one of Escamillio Champagne in a lily - a sacred wine. Champagne in a lily bursting and sparkling The wine contained in a flower's cup. I glory in rapture the Christ and the Antichrist With soul deified in delight of a gulp! A hawk and a mourning dove! Reichstag and Bastille - The sleep and the wakefulness! Demon and Lord! Lily in champagne and champagne in a lily - The lighthouse of oneness in sea of discord!Top
Be Calm
Be calm, my soft and delicate one, Coyly loving and loved indeed: You're my fragrant autumn, Tender, sorrowful, one I need... Only you give me balm and heal Soul full of question and sin And I into your spring-like fall Will reach with my fall-like spring...Top
In Luminous Darkness
Tuxedoed, attired immaculately, the high-society gentlemen Stupefying their faces, brought themselves into a room, I gave a forced smile, sarcastically ash and darkness remembering: A new poetic motif unexpectedly breaking the gloom. Every line - a slap on the cheek. My voice - torture, atrocity. Rhymes come together happily. Tongue shows the assonance. I despise you fiercely, O all you dim luminosities, And, while despising, I count on global resonance! With light you're fogged over evilly, O the luminous audience! Hidden from you, undeserving ones, is future's horizon you've sought. In Severyanin's time, O all you dim luminosities, It should be known that since Pushkin came both Blok and Balmont!Top
Overture
Pineapples in champagne! Pineapples in champagne! Deliriously tasty, sparkling and bright! I'm in something from Norway! I'm in something from Spain! I'm inspired in bursts and I sit down to write. Planes are screeching above me! Automobiles are running! Express trains whistling by and the yachts taking flight! Someone's kissed over here! Someone elsewhere is beaten! Pineapples in champagne - the pulse of the night! Among nervous girls and in company of women Tragedy I am turning to dream and to farce. Pineapples in champagne! Pineapples in champagne! Moscow to Nagasaki! New York to Mars!Top
Taffey
Where are you now, soul sad and overwrought With smile that's snide but also is merry? How in this newness, sorrowful and blurry, Can you exist, and breathe, and be in thought? Your lips adorned with tapestry that stings - Your eyes in which there's laughter and there's sorrow - All draped in furs, are close to my soul And closer to my soul's silver strings. O strange one! O the sorrowful! In thee There's something luring! Yes, you are illumined With lyricism of soul in perfume, O lily in a Bacchus revelry!Top
Lilac Lullaby
When sea of lilac all around, in purple having dressed horizon, Will fall asleep, in evening mirror reflecting, lemon-like, the moon, I pose a question to the nature, but, having answered to me nothing, It shimmers in the dream's ensnarement - and beautiful this dream will loom. Like a white swan the night's alighting, like a white lily it is fanning, And disappears, like a white fairy, that just like spring alights in white - That thirst this pitiful our planet to light with music and with heaven - Clanging with gold aflame the sunrise, its bells in ruby, full of light. And all these paints of the aromas, the moods' varieties at sundown, Upon a white night I am sensing at sea, asleep as if in glass, When, even though it is not sinking, the lemon moon in lilac drowns And, of its own self exhausted, lilac caresses all on earth.Top
Introduction
I'm nightingale: no traits I carry And without special depth I sing. But everyone, from crone to baby, Will know me, singer of the spring. I'm nightingale, I am a graybird, But like a rainbow is my song. I only have a single habit: To other lands to lure the throng. I'm nightingale! What for, then, so Is godless critic with his scorn? Seek, swine, the treasure in a trough, And not in garlands made of thorns! I'm nightingale, and, beside singing, No other use can come of me. I am so wondrous beyond reason That Reason bows before my feet!Top
By the Sea
From sea blows the Finlandean gale - The penetrating wind of north - And does mean magic on the sail, Tipping the edge of simple boat. Seeing the waves, I walk alone Over the cliff that overhangs, All is green, and there is snow. I look at pink skin-colored sand. The snow covers entire foothills From mountain tops until sand dunes. And after him screams with the distance The sadness of the color blue. The green above, beneath - blue-yellow, The in-between, chilly and white. The sky is made sea to inhabit: In desert, desert is imbibed.Top
Leitmotifs
All day to dreaming I surrender, I give my life over to dreams. I am no soldier, salesman, dandy - I only sing and sing and sing! What use is kingdom and porphyry? What use is any role for me? Beyond the supple fence of lyre - I am the ever-reigning king! What for, your cogitations' cold? What for, political dissents? The spring day's warm and full of gold - And I look with a springtime gaze! Be blessed, grass, grow tall and mighty! And you, the green-appareled waves! No sinners: Everyone is righteous; Most righteous still - he who forgave!Top
Love is causelessness
Love is a causelessness. Thoughtlessness even. To love for a reason? I love for I feel. Love is like a troika, demented and rabid, Rushing toward a ship that is leaving to sail. Where to? Does not matter. I like aimless journeys. Magnolias blooming... Wandering ice... Fly onward, my troika, in path of a snowstorm, Where my ship gets ready for watery flight. Stomp out, my dear troika, discretion and reason, Smoke with a fire, flaming, foaming and white! What for? For no reason - my heart's drunk with freedom From reason. The ship leaves. On it I'll take flight.Top
Painted Ones
They're "red" today, and they're "white" tomorrow - Ah, no tapestry! No flowers, this! Tiresome to me to the point of nausea, Small people hideous and turned to beasts. Lowly today and tomorrow lowly, Today the thieves and tomorrow too. Vile scoundrels now and vile scoundrels formerly, Will provoke any revolt for you. Ideas foolish, dreams, all in vanity, That in their theory is way to god. They all are colorless in their entity - Today they're "white" and tomorrow "red"!Top
Poem of the Reason for Cheer
We live in astounded wonder At change of contrasting events. Vienna's horrors and hunger Threw us into chills and cold sweat. And that, which we left on the east side - Unfathomable to the mind. In some times and dates you are trusting, Not knowing yet how and why. You aren't weak in the soul, I am sure, As you lean over life, like an urn: In a republic miniature The big order has been born. Perhaps we are broken in hope And thrown into an abyss: We're sated, we're sated, and so We're ready for faith and for bliss. We trust - we can't not trust, I found! We wait - we can't not wait in our turn! That world will in that measure be crowned Which divine grace will return.Top
Poem to Luminous Brother
To birds and to poets the Lord all their sustenance gives: I don't reap or sow, but for a second year I exist. And for kind song-poems the people who're also kind Will forgive your errors and sins, too, if any they find. Who needs the art now? Who needs it - I do not know, But to me it's air, and I keep singing so. And radiant someone - not Russian, Estonian - stranger - An angel of God? Follows me and protects me from danger. In art he believes, and to me he is brimming with love: "Be yourself, poet: Sing all your songs, stay alive!" And like a poor bird, poet is glad of alms in his plight... O luminous brother, I sing you with song of delight!Top
Poem of Despair
I know nothing, I trust in nothing, I no longer in life see its brighter side. I approach my friend as if he were a lion I need nothing else. I am bored and tired. Someone knifes someone, smothers another.. Everywhere, cheating, lying and greed. Would eyes not see and would ears not hear! Lermontov! Weren't you right - "what in world is good?" Even thought is corrupt, even love is deceiving. There's no fulfilled dream. All is smoke and mirrors. I see no joy in living, see in life no meaning. I'm feeling horror. I master fear.Top
Poem of Old Rhythms
O you the ancient rhymes and rhythms, Seized on by many poets, The banal, cheap, and puny ones, Cliches overcooked and boiled! You sound with the guitar strings, With rhythms and rhyme impoverished, Than all new things more beautiful To my simplistic soul! You were under Derzhavin, You were under Nekrasov You were under Nikitin, And under Tolstoy too! Oh you - just like an avalanche! And though you were discarded, And though new ones are written - You burst into my book! I greet you, my dear loyal ones, The fully tried and tested ones, The musical and flowerful And most beloved by me! Exemplary companions You dear ones, you tender ones, The happy and the sorrowful The nightingale-like rhythms!Top
Poem to Refugees
In these miniature Russian colonies Those who are hiding from lawlessness Their sinful bodies and souls, Interests are so pitiful Feelings vicious and hypocritical: They seek only food and warmth. They all eat - it is only appropriate, And the warmth in our time is important too, Nobody will argue with that. But apart from the warmth and the victuals There are needs mental and spiritual, Besides breakfast and wood and coat. There is theater, symphony and poems, There are paintings, and if in Estonia There is no such delight, My compatriots, Russian terribly, It's your fault that you see things narrowly, And you lose your hearing and sight. If you'll find nothing like this within this land And this village except the wheat bread, Maybe at nights we will perform Shows of music and poems, and vocalists We will give majestic performances And perhaps we will dance until dawn. Maybe we'll declaim aloud Gogol's thought (Fess up: you did not read a lot Of his work in your life, dear friends). Maybe take something from Nekrasov And to know travels of Hatteras, if Nietzsche, for one, the powers forbid. But what are such pursuits to you Calling nothing but curses out of you Better revelry, maps and food! Better gossip, intrigue and constant complaints That for long the army should have advanced For your sake to retake Petrograd.Top
Poem of Feeling of Spring
You are ready from gloom to suicide, Hang yourself, or shoot in the mouth. Wait a while - and the spring will come to your side After just three more snowy months. Nightingales of the cherry will whistle, Full of nightingales cherry will stand. May go past you the shot from the pistol And the rope fall apart in your hands. With the fishing rods made of redwood People will catch the fish on the hook, And the swan with white breast and white feathers Will swim lightly upon the lake. Mounds will breathe with dampness and drown, Will send redolence and be green, And your neck, as it gives a way down, Will become pouring with rain. And the bushes under flooding river Into lilac and cherry will bloom. Noisy, singing, the spring will deliver All your girlfriends and also - you. And will love, and will bloom, and will spring again All that dimmed in the winter from gloom. All the dry will be cut by axe-wielding hand And the juicy will bravely bloom. Do not kill yourself, do hang your head, Rather let your fantasy play. We will live through these months however we can, And soon afterwards - there is May!Top
Brilliant Poem
I do not want to live my life, like all, Living like squirrels in a hamster wheel, Walking around in circles, being slaves, Afraid of storm and of the ocean waves. I want to live uplifted like an eagle; I want to live conceited like a Creole; Smashing, threatening barriers, sliding by Between the two "forbidden"'s intertwined. I want to live, a wise and brilliant man Of all his peers a century ahead And yet in other measures, to exist A fifty years behind my time at least. I want to live, as it behooves to live To him who knows to conjure and conceive New notes from ancient ones and from the past - I want to live the way life lives, at last!Top
Cultivated Lilac Blooming
In violet and purple bloomed the lilac, The lilac bloomed in pink and white and pale. We headed toward it on a tortuous trail Across an ancient fur and furrowed park. Sea to the left; river ahead, and hills - Behind; the blooming lilacs on the mounts Weave from the gentle smell delightful clouds And breathe the timeless redolence that heals. The lilac bloomed, and to my love I told: "If only I could take pen in my hand!" And she responded sharply in her stead: "The lilac blooms - large, and like ruby and like gold." The night is fickle, nervous, luminous. The kisses, nibbles until lips turned blue. There's so much taste and elegance in you The lilac bloomed - the bodies bloomed in us.Top
To Felissa Kruut
My dear Felissochka! My most exquisite! I give you "Minstrel" and all my dreams. You are beloved by all that's delicate, My sweet Felissa - My violin! May to the crude one you be an egotist - I care not: You are most loved by me! My most talented! My sweet Felissochka! My one sought after! My destiny! The hate of sin here is love of marriage: You like it when I say "bride" to you. Symbol of Hestia! Little Hestochka! In you again I will find my youth!Top
Poem to Death
In name of the Lord I forbid you to come Into the house where Lord willed for life to bloom In name of God I forbid you, death! Is there not enough for you in the world In cannon's maw and in the steel of the sword? In name of God I forbid you, death! Go, go far away, whore! Do not stand at the door! Do not warm poet's home with your icy breath! In name of God I forbid you, death!Top
To One Different from Others
You're in no way like other women at all: You have laughter controlled and expressive, You wear dresses measured and fashionably long And you slip out from my embraces. You do not cut your hair to look upscale, Deepen brows or wear make up, You have Smirnoff, but also a nightingale Who in nature becomes his replacement, You are able to see in the sugar the salt, And in just uttered word, a full sentence. In Akhmatova you value pain without halt And in Gumilev - charm and cadence. For you, connoisseur of all kinds of verse, Sharpness of Sologubov means something, And that you and Blok never did kiss You are grieving sixth summer and counting. And in your eyes, as they are now getting well - Ocean breeze and a rye field in season. You're in no way like other women at all, And you've become my wife for that reason.Top
Praise to the Fields
My fields, my wave-like, foaming fields! With autumn spinach, brown as if of bricks, And lettuce, clover, heather and daisy. How much the eyes can hear and ears can see! I walk along the side of the river. The wildflowers shine like sapphire Leaning beneath the wheat's golden frame, I hear, as in the river splashes elm, This splash like music gives its gentle sound. And the blue storm of sea? A burst of sun? And clouds within the sky, all white like sheep? The life with its simplicity is deep. While I am able still to touch your breath, May it become and stay forever blessed! And may the ground become the earth in bliss - The fields, the fields, the life-begetting fields!Top
They all speak about the same thing
Nightingales of monastery garden, Like all nightingales flying above, Say that there is but one joy in living, And that this joy comes in form of love. And the monastery meadow's flowers With the tenderness just flowers possess, Say there's but one merit: Lovers Touch their lips together and caress. And, filled to the brim with blueness endless, Lakes among the monastery wood, Say: There's no more azure glance Than in those who love and who are loved.Top
Classical Roses
Once, when the dreams would bloom - the times were those - In people's hearts, transparent and aflame, How fresh, how beautiful have been the roses Of my love, of my spring, and of my fame! The years have passed, many a tear flows - The country and its people all are lost. How fresh, how beautiful are now the roses Of memories of my delightful past! But days go by, and thunder's in repose. Russia is seeking pathways to go home. How fresh, how beautiful will be the roses That my country will throw upon my tomb!Top
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