Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LETTERS TO YESENIN: 22, by JAMES HARRISON



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LETTERS TO YESENIN: 22, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: These last few notes to you have been a bit somber like biographies
Last Line: His deathless lines commemorating your last leningrad night.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Imaginary Conversations; Poetry & Poets; Yesenin, Sergei (1895-1925)


These last few notes to you have been a bit somber like biographies of artists
written by joyless people so that the whole book is a record of agony at thirty
rather than thirty-three and a third. You know the sound - Keeeaaattts wuzzz
verrry unhappppppy abouttt dyinnnng. So here are some of those off-the-wall
extravagancies. Dawn in Ecuador with mariachi music, dawn at Ngorongoro with
elephant far below in the crater swaggering through the marsh grass, dawn in
Moscow and snowing with gold minarets shouting that you have at last reached
Asia, dawn in Addis Ababa with a Muslim waver in the cool air smelling of ginger
and a lion roaring on the lawn, dawn in bleary Paris with a roll tasting like
zinc and a girl in a cellophane blouse staring at you with four miraculous eyes,
dawn in Normandy with a conceivable princess breathing in the next room and
horses wandering across the moat beneath my window, dawn in Montana with herons
calling from the swamp, dawn in Key West wondering if it was a woman or tarpon
that left your bed before cockcrow, dawn at home when your eyes are molten and
the ghost of your dog chases the fox across the pasture, dawn on the Escanaba
with trout dimpling the mist and the water with a dulcet roar, dawn in London
when the party-girl leaves your taxi to go home to Shakespeare, dawn in
Leningrad with the last linden leaves falling and you knocking at the door for a
drunken talk but I am asleep. Not to speak of the endless and nearly
unconscious water walks after midnight when even the stars might descend another
foot to get closer to earth. Heat. The wetness of air. Couplings. Even the
mosquitoes are lovely and seem to imitate miniature birds. And a lion's cough
is followed rhythmically by a hyena's laugh to prove that nature loves symmetry.
The black girl leaves the grand hotel for her implausibly shabby home. The poet
had dropped five sorts of drugs in his belly swill of alcohol and has imagined
his deathless lines commemorating your last Leningrad night.





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