Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's copy of his tribute article on the death of the early Soviet poet Sergei Essenin, "To The memory Of Sergei Essenin". Essenin is also mentioned in Trotsky's well-known critique of early Soviet literary figures, "Literature and Revolution".
Sergei Essenin: a few poems
(1923)
looking at you makes me sad
so painful
what pity
i guess only the copper leaves are left for us in September
other lips have taken your warmth
and little cold rain is drizzling from your soul
well, it doesn't scare me
i've found a different joy
and there is nothing left but the yellow rot and dumpness
i haven't exactly preserved myself either
for quiet life and smiles..
walked too few roads
made too many mistakes..
funny life, funny mismatch
has always been.. and will be
and the garden looks like a cemetery
covered with the white bones of treetranks
we'll die like the flowers
and dissapear like the guests of the garden
since there are no flowers in the winter
why be sad about them?
(1917)
The red wings of the sunset are dying
Quietly, the fence is snoozing in the fog
Don't be so melancholy, my tiny white cabin
That again you and I are alone.
Surrounded by blue
The moon is cleaning her horns
On the straw of the roof
I did not go after her, didn't follow
And didn't walk her to the end of the field.
I know, years will quiet my worry
This pain, just like years, will pass
And her innocent mouth and soul
She will save for another.
The one who begs for joy is weak
Only the proud live strongly
But another will crumple her and throw her away
Like an old, rotten horse-collar.
It's not out of misery that I wait for my fortune
One day there will be a nasty snowstorm
And she will come to this land
And she'll come inside to warm her child.
She'll take off her warm coat and shawls
Will sit cozily by my fire
And will say quietly and affectionately
That the child looks like me.
hooligan (1919)
Rain is cleaning with wet brooms
Willows' poop in the meadows
Wind, you can spit armfuls of leaves -
I am a hooligan, just like you
I love it when the blue thickets,
Like bulls with heavy step,
Stomachs wheezing with leaves,
Soil the knees of the tree trunks
Here it is, my red flock!
Who could sing to you better than I?
I can see the twilight licking human footprints...
My Russia, wooden Russia!
I am the only one to sing to you
I have fed with berries and mint
The sadness of my beast's poems
Let the night bring the moon's pitcher
Draw up the milk of the birch grove!
Looks like the church near by
Wants to strangle someone with the hands of it's crosses!
Something sinister walks the hills,
Drips thief's spite into our garden
But I myself am a bandit and a cad
And by blood - a horse thief
Who ever saw how boil in the night
Legions of the bird-cherry trees?
I was born to the night in the blue roads
To stalk the dark with my knives
Oh, The yellow bush of my head has withered
I got sucked into the poetry prison
Sentenced to turn the grindstones of the verse
In penal servitude of feelings
But don't fret, crazy wind,
Keep spitting leaves in the meadows
The label "poet" won't erase me,
Even in my songs, I am, like you, a hooligan.
(1921)
Not sorry, not calling, not crying,
All will pass like smoke of white apple trees
Seized with the gold of autumn,
I will no longer be young
Now you won't beat so,
My heart, touched with cold
And the land of the birch-tree cotton
Won't seduce me into running barefoot
My vagabond spirit, there are yet fewer times
When you move the fire of my song
Oh my lost freshness,
Strorm of eyes and spring flood of feelings!
Now I am with my wishes stingier
Did I dream you up, my life?
As if in the early, booming spiring
I have galloped through on a pink stallion
All, all in this life is mortal
Quietly flows copper of leaves from the mapple
So be you forever blessed
That which came to flower and die.
(1924-1925)
To be a poet - is the same
As when by truth of life
You scar your own tender flesh,
And with the blood of feelings
Caress the souls of others.
To be a poet - to sing freedom,
As you know it best
The song of nightgale doesn't hurt him -
His song is always the same.
Canary mimiking someone's voice -
Pitiful and silly bauble
World needs real songs - so sing like only you can
Even if you sond like a frog.
Mohammed has overdone it in Quran
When he forbade strong drink
That is why the poet will not stop
Drinking wine before he goes to the torture
And when a poet goes to his lover,
And finds her lying with another
He, kept by life-sustaining liquid,
Won't send a knife into her heart.
But, burning up with jealous recklessness,
Will whistle on the way back home
"So what, so I will die a vagabond,
On this earth such fate is also known."
(1925)
Life - a lie with charming sadness
That is where lies her strength
And with her rought hand,
She writes the word of fate.
Always, when I close my eyes,
I say, "Touch your heart and see,
Life - a lie, but even She sometimes
Adorns a lie with joys.
Turn your face to greying sky,
Telling fortune by the moon,
Calm, mortal, and do not ask
The truth you do not need."
It's good in the bird-cherry tree storm
To think that life is fated way.
Let my easy lovers lie to me,
Let my easy friends betray me.
Let them caress me with a tender word,
Let the wicked tongue be sharper than a razor, -
I've long been living ready for anything,
Mercilessly used to everything.
These heights chill my soul,
There is no warmth in the fire of the stars.
Those whom I loved, have renounced me,
For whom I've lived - forgotten me.
But still, unwanted and exiled,
I look with smile at the sunrise,
And on this earth, so close and dear,
I thank this life for everything.
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