The Slynx (39 page)

88
No, I do not hold that stormy pleasure dear!:
Alexander

Pushkin
You lie in silence, heeding ne'er a sound:
Alexander Pushkin 134
But the hand behind your back is stronger:
Natalya Kran-

dievskaya 189
O tender specter, happy chance:
Natalya Krandievskaya

190
O city! O wind! O snowstorms and blizzards!:
Alexander Blok

But is the world not all alike?:
Natalya Krandievskaya 202
Bright thoughts ascend:
Alexander Blok 206
From the threshold of the gate:
Bulat Okudzhava 208
February! Grab the inks and cry!:
Boris Pasternak 216
Oh, the moment, oh, the bitter fight:
Alexei Khvostenko 223
Our eyes were glued to the tribune:
anonymous Soviet poem,

c. 1970s 231
Steppe and nothing else:
Russian folk song

233
And where is that clearest of fires:
Bulat Okudzhava

234
The lamplighter should have lit them, but sleeps:
Bulat

Okudzhava

241
Beneath a canopy of fetid thatch:
Natalya Krandievskaya

242
In the stony cracks between the tiles:
Nikolai Zabolotsky
Life, you're but a mouse's scurry:
Alexander Pushkin
Neither fire nor darkened huts:
Alexander Pushkin

245
O world, roll up into a single block:
Nikolai Zabolotsky

246
Joy, thou beauteous godly lightning:
Schiller, from Beethoven's

Ninth Symphony

254
The trepidation of life, of all the centuries and races:

Maximilian Voloshin
He who draws the darkest lot of chance:
Alexander Blok
What kind of East do you favor?:
Vladimir Solovyov
Is all quiet among our fair people?:
Alexander Blok

255
Man suits all elements, every season:
Alexander Pushkin

274
My steppe is burned, the grass is felled:
Alexander Blok

275
O joyless, painless moment!:
Natalya Krandievskaya