marikia Poetry (260)

This I would ask you in response, my dear old friend,
Do you sincerely think it rather matters if it's Life or Death?
We know, Life’s transient, no use to trust it much,
In Life’s embrace beware and never loose your touch.
Life, when it’s dancing, see how well it twists and bends,
Don’t put your fortune on its stake, my dear friend.
Though looking sinister to us Death makes amends,
Death may send jimjams up your spine, but it is not that bad.
In times when Life in sheer spite mistreats and shatters our lives
We summon Death to ease our pain, to come and bring us blissful rest,
This I would add as my comment to option if it's Life or Death.

Smile, please smile to me, light my spirits up,
Oh I need your smile, is it much to ask?
All this time I've been throwing ancient stuff,
Better free some space, bid to past good bye.
Thought it wise to let my old memories die,
Cease to cling to past, rather start new life.
What if life brings news and a happy chance,
What if things turn round, now for us this time,
What if dreams come true, it does happen once!
Smile, please, smile to me, now it's all I ask.

My friend, I know you’re having rest, are sleeping now,
It’s night, sweet dreams to you, forget about daily strife.
This Valentine we’ve missed our chance, we failed somehow,
But our disappointment isn’t new, experience tells as much.
This time it proved to be a missed call, didn’t fit in,
Still failed to find our place on the Olympus mount of Love.
This I would say to you: we shouldn’t stop believing,
There’s still some hope we can rely on while we climb.
Forget, this Valentine’s a day and nothing much,
Write message as I do, come close and I will tell you why.

We are leaving in noiseless stream
For a place with much quietude, bliss.
Soon my time may arrive to leave,
Pack my things, hit the road in mist.

Lovely birch groves, so dear to heart!
You, the land! You, the sands of plains!
Face to face with these sad farewells
I can no longer hide my pain.

Oh I loved so much in land of living
All that clothed a soul in earthly flesh.
Peace to aspens with scattered branches,
Staring in wonderment at rosy bay.

Many things I have pondered in silence,
Many songs I have composed about me,
And on land that is so gloomy and sullen
I’m still happy that I breathed and lived.

No more be grieved at that which thou has done:
For as you know we err, this is the way of life.
So many sins that we commit make even devil blush,
Our imperfections are so obvious, no sense to hide.
And sins committed in the name of Love,
No matter how inadvertent or how innocent they are,
We tend mistakenly not to regard as such,
Thinking them posing threat to senses of no one.
But selfless love is pure for all sins it shuns
Committed both in name of Love and mere spite.

W. Shakespeare, Sonnet 35

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.

All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,
Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;

For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense -
Thy adverse party is thy advocate -
And 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence:
Such civil war is in my love and hate

That I an accessary needs must be
To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.

It is me who should ask for the mercy,
For the coldness and dryness of kiss,
And for thaw in the night of Epiphany,
For the January sparing of sun.

For the homelessness and loneliness,
For the tiredness in your eyes,
For the words that I in the morning
Am so eager to take back and wipe.

Maybe summer arrives bringing healing
In the burning haze of pointed spires.
Once again I’ll keep silent about it,
Once again you will pardon my rush.

Bravery is more than just a word, not trite, for
Every man to boast and walk with pompous pride.
When caught in tempest stars above go blind,
Heat dries the soil no grain to vegetate, all crop to die,
And oceans sweep over land in spiteful, savage rush
To devastate and turn to waste creations of man’s mind.
You stand your ground in Love, be brave, in boundless
Ocean Love will show the way where to steer your bark
Under the heavenly light, in gale and stormy night.
Are you that brave not to forsake and carry love in heart
Regardless of all pain and no reward to find?
Endure to the end are you prepared for your Love?

For shame! deny that thou bear'st love to any,
Just think how wasteful is your life deprived of love.
If only you could know life is for love and caring,
I would forgive the slight for precious memories of ours.
Beware of the grievous outcome you’ll have to bear:
No love, no fruit of love in your life’s final days,
No hopes to be remembered how you fared,
Just books and poetry you will be mentioned by.
Think of the pleasures you deny yourself
This waste will show before you even passed away.

W.Shakespeare. Sonnet # 10

For shame! deny that thou bear'st love to any,
Who for thyself art so unprovident.
Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,
But that thou none lovest is most evident;

For thou art so possess'd with murderous hate
That 'gainst thyself thou stick'st not to conspire.
Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate
Which to repair should be thy chief desire.

O, change thy thought, that I may change my mind!
Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?
Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind,
Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove:

Make thee another self, for love of me,
That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

You remember,
No doubt you remember
Me standing
In a trance close by the wall.
Excitedly the floor you were pacing
And threw some hurtful words
In anguish, pain to cause.

You were saying:
It was time we parted,
That you were weary
Of all my rakish ways,
It’s time you ever started doing something,
While I was doomed
To fall, to slowly slide away.

Beloved!
You never, never loved me.
You didn’t know that in the crowds of men
Like winded horse I was in foam, worn out,
With spurs dug into sides by horseman bold.

You didn’t know
That in impervious gloom,
In our lives unfurled by tempest
I am tormented for I lack foresight
Of destination where fate will take us.

............

Beloved!
I tortured you,
I saw the anguish
In tired eyes:
That I, in front of you, for everyone to see
Just wasted life in fights and throwing fists.
But you, you didn't know,
That in impervious gloom,
In our lives unfurled by tempest
I am tormented for I lack foresight
Of destination where fate will take us.

.............

I beg to pardon me ...
I know, you’re not that other, mine,
That peacefully you live
With confident and clever husband.
That you no longer need our strife,
And that me too
You need not in the least, alas!

Just live the way
You’re guided by your star
Under the canopy of hopes’ renewal.
Saluting you,
Remembering all the time,
A friend of yours
Sergei Yesenin.

1924

In vain I waste myself from day to day,
By nights I dream of her, who is my only life,
Because of whom I am enduring much strife,
I’m fascinated with her charming face.

Oh God, I pray to Three, with all my worthy acts
Let me atone for lapse I was reduced to thus,
And Devil I will put to shame, expose, unmask
With all his useless nets he weaves for our hearts.

Eleven years have passed since time
That I’m tormented under press so grim,
Marked and selected thus by evil sign.

Pray, pardon one, unworthy of Your grant,
Remind my mind so much confused and dim
How on this fateful day You were crucified.

In dreams I am happy, rejoice in the sad.
To shadows and wind I stretch out my hands,
I roam in the sea with no bottom and end,
I write on streams, I build on the sand.

How Sun does shine from far, far off,
My sight goes blind and everything’s in fog,
I hurry in wake of a fleeing doe,
Riding my hobbling feeble ox.

Things that don't hurt attract us in vain,
No, I am striving, in dreams and awake
To Madonna, to death, to my fateful land.

And all these long twenty years of pain
I’ve lived with moans and grief beyond end.
I’m caught, I'm in love, I am pining to death.

See red wings of sunset dying out,
Wattles slumber tranquilly in fog.
Don’t be sad, oh my hut, in the quiet
That again we’re alone and alone.

Moon is cleaning in thatched roof
Horns of hers set in frame of blue.
Didn’t follow her, made no move
To where haystacks remotely stood.

Know that years will dull the blow,
And this anguish like years will go.
And her lips and her innocent soul
She will spare for some other boy.

Far from strong is who asks for joy,
Only proud in strength keeps afloat.
And that other will crumple and toss,
Like horse collar that’s eaten with moist.

Not from sickness at heart await I fortune,
Storm will twirl fresh snow from sheer spite.
She’ll be back to where is her birthplace,
She’ll return to give its warmth to little one.

She will take off her coat, untie shawls,
Perch herself by my side, close to heat,
And she’ll say in her sweet, tender tones
That the child bears resemblance to me.