Poems List

‘Like a brazier’s bronze cinders,’

‘Like a brazier’s bronze cinders,’

Like a brazier’s bronze cinders,
the sleepy garden’s beetles flowing.
Level with me, and my candle,
a flowering world is hanging.

As if into unprecedented faith,
I cross into this night,
where the poplar’s beaten grey
veils the moon’s rim from sight.

Where the pond’s an open secret,
where apple-trees whisper of waves,
where the garden hanging on piles,
holds the sky before its face.
👁️ 449

‘February. Take ink and weep,’

‘February. Take ink and weep,’

February. Take ink and weep,
write February as you’re sobbing,
while black Spring burns deep
through the slush and throbbing.

Take a cab. For a clutch of copecks,
through bell-towers’ and wheel noise,
go where the rain-storm’s din breaks,
greater than crying or ink employs.

Where rooks in thousands falling,
like charred pears from the skies,
drop down into puddles, bringing
cold grief to the depths of eyes.

Below, the black shows through,
and the wind’s furrowed with cries:
the more freely, the more truly
then, sobbing verse is realised.
👁️ 419

A corner draft fluttered the flame And the white fever of temptation Upswept its angel wings that cast A cruciform shadow.

Doctor Zhivago. The Poems of Yurii Zhivago 4 (ch. 17), Winter Night, st. 7

👁️ 1

All customs and traditions, all our way of life, everything to do with home and order, has crumbled into dust in the general upheaval and reorganization of society. The whole human way of life has been destroyed and ruined. All that’s left is the naked human soul stripped to the last shred, for which nothing has changed because it was always cold and shivering and reaching out to its nearest neighbor, as cold and lonely as itself.

The New Yale Book of Quotations

But what are pity, conscience, or fear To the brazen pair, compared With the living sorcery Of their hot embraces?

Bacchanalia 2 [1957], st. 4

I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees’ hypocrisy. To live your life is not as simple as to cross a field. 1

Hamlet 2 [1946]

I am caught like a beast at bay. Somewhere are people, freedom, light, But all I hear is the baying of the pack, There is no way out for me.

The Nobel Prize 2 [1959]

I don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn’t of much value. Life hasn’t revealed its beauty to them.

Doctor Zhivago (1958)

In life it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies.
👁️ 1

It snowed and snowed, the whole world over, Snow swept the world from end to end. A candle burned on the table; A candle burned.

Doctor Zhivago 3 [1958]. The Poems of Yurii Zhivago 4 (ch. 17), Winter Night, st. 1

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