Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LETTERS TO YESENIN: 17, by JAMES HARRISON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LETTERS TO YESENIN: 17, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Behind my back I have returned to life with much more surprise
Last Line: Pier. You might want her even in your ghostly form.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Poverty; Travel; Yesenin, Sergei (1895-1925); Journeys; Trips


Behind my back I have returned to life with much more surprise than conviction.
All those months in the cold with neither tears nor appetite no matter that I
was in Nairobi or Arusha, Rome, the fabled Paris flat and dry as a newsphoto.
And lions looked like lions in books. Only the rumbling sound of an elephant
shooting water into his stomach with a massive trunk made any sense. But I
thought you would have been pleased with the Galla women in Ethiopia and walking
the Colonnade near the Vendome I knew you had walked there. Such a few signs of
life. Life brings us down to earth he thinks. Father of two at thirty-five
can't seem to earn a living. But whatever muse there is on earth is not
concerned with groceries. We like to believe that Getty couldn't buy a good line
for a billion dollars. When we first offered ourselves up to her when young and
in our waking dreams she promised nothing. Not certainly that we could buy a
bike for our daughter's birthday or eat good cuts of beef instead of hamburger.
She doesn't seem to care that our wine is ordinary. She walks in and out the
door without knocking. She takes off her clothes and ruins the marriage bed.
She out-and-out killed you Sergei for no reason I can think of. And you might
want to kill her but she changes so fast whether into a song, a deer, a pig, the
girl sitting on the pier in a short dress. You want to fish but you turn and
there larger than any movie are two thighs and louder than any howl they beckon
you to the life they hold so gently. We said that her eyes were bees and ice
glistened in her hair. And we know she can become a rope but then you're never
sure as all rope tends to resemble itself though it is common for it to rest in
coils like snakes. Or rope. But I must earn our living and can't think about
rope though I am to be allowed an occasional girl drawing up her thighs on a
pier. You might want her even in your ghostly form.





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