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LETTERS TO YESENIN: 13, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: All of those little five-dollar-a-week rooms smelling thick of
Last Line: Blood.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Poetry & Poets; Poverty; Russia; Yesenin, Sergei (1895-1925); Soviet Union; Russians


All of those little five-dollar-a-week rooms smelling thick of cigarette smoke
and stale tea bags. The private bar of soap smearing the dresser top, on the
chair a box of cookies and a letter from home. And what does he think he's
doing and do we all begin our voyage into Egypt this way. The endless bondage
of words. That's why you turned to those hooligan taverns and vodka, Crane to
his sailors in Red Hook. Four walls breathe in and out. The clothes on the
floor are a dirty shroud. The water is stale in its glass. Just one pull on the
bottle starts the morning faster. If you don't rouse your soul you will surely
die while others are having lunch. Noon. You passed the point of retreat and
took that dancer, a goad, perhaps a goddess. The food got better anyhow and the
bottles. This is all called romantic by some without nostrils tinctured by
cocaine. No romance here, but a willingness to age and die at the speed of
sound. Outside there's a successful revolution and you've been designated a
parasite. Everywhere crushed women are bearing officious anti-Semites. Stalin
begins his diet of iron shavings and blood. Murder swings with St. Basil's
bell, a thousand per gong free of charge. North on the Baltic Petrodvorets is
empty and inland, Pushkin is empty. Nabokov has sensibly flown the shabby coop.
But a hundred million serfs are free and own more that the common bread; a red-
tinged glory, neither fire nor sun, a sheen without irony on the land. Who
could care that you wanted to die, that your politics changed daily, that your
songs turned to glass and were broken. No time to marry back in Ryazan, buy a
goat, three dogs, and fish for perch. The age gave you a pistol and you gave it
back, gave you two wives and you gave them both back, gave you a rope to swing
from which you used wisely. You were good enough to write that last poem in
blood.





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