Pencil Letter - Irina Ratushinskaya

I know it won't be received
Or sent. The page will be
In shreds as soon as I have scribbled it.

With the Wind - Konstantin Balmont

My soul is borne out on the wind.
Through the opaqueness of her earthly case she glitters like a sword.
She is free; she rides her body as the whirlwind the storm.

Sevenfold (A Lamentation) - Ber Kotlerman

Tear your eyes away from the grey news stream
Sit on the floor and weep, and moan, and keen
At the sheer horror, obscene.

blue bridge - Viktor Krivulin

where gloomed as lilac
an upturned bowbend
blue bridge shadow—

And it was here — it was autumn - Vladimir Solovyov

And it was here — it was autumn —

When I told Her: “Divine Flower,

I feel Your touch! But why have you hidden Yourself

From my sight since I was a boy?”

The Gift of Speech - Mariya Avvakumova

The Gift of Speech

You have overcome so many trials . . .

Kuokkala - Benedikt Livshits

Roses in silken bouillon:

Opening onto the azure silk

A line of cabins on a yellow bed -

Shells of Aphrodite.

Here lay Leningraders - Olga Berggolts

Here are city dwellers, men, women, and children

Next to them, Red Army soldiers.

To my physician - Elisabeth Kulmann

Physician, cease thine effort! 

I speak and have no fear 

Thou canst no longer save me, 

I know that Death is near. 

My Home - Olga Berggolts

In the home where I lived many years,

From where I left the winter of the blockade,

A light once again appears in the evening windows.

It is pinkish, festive, elegant.

Three Springs - Aleksandr Pushkin

Three springs in life’s unbroken joyless desert

Mysteriously issue from the sands:

How the granite is covered in ice - Boris Ryzhy

How the granite is covered in ice,

and a frost lies on the ground –

This town, frosted with memories,

I want to leave it for ever.

The Untied Shoelaces - Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Like a ghost in a crowd

I don't leave any traces.

I am snagged in the web

of untied shoelaces...

Each one of the shoelaces

it's owner chases...

Vessel - Boris Ryzhy

Enamel bedpan

Window, nightstand, and a bed

Life is hard and uncomfortable

But it's nice to die

You are my song, my dark-blue dream - Velemir Khlebnikov

You are my song, my dark-blue dream

of doves, of winter's drowsy drone,

The Horse's Face - Nikolay Alekseyevich Zabolotsky

Animals don't sleep. In the dark after nightfall

They stand over the world like a stone wall.

a tribute to emily dickinson - Piotr Kostousov

I swap my freedom like a coin

for paths and springs and groves,

Monolog of an Effigy - Yevgeny Yevtushenko

When my charitable fellow-writers

               were burning my effigy

and not poking my guts with their pocket-knives —

                    thank God!

Exodus - Marina Boroditskaya

So I was wondering how they crossed that seabed

When the whole watery firmament was combed, wave to floor

And the squelch, squelch, squelch, and the walls on either side

Going up and up like a great aquatic corridor

Ode (from Job) - Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov

O man! whose weakness dares rebel 
Against the Almighty's strength, draw nigh 
And listen, for my tongue shall tell 
His message from the clouded sky. 
Midst rain, and storm, and hail, he spoke,
Around the piercing thunder broke; 
At his proud word the clouds disperse, 
And thus he shakes the universe: