Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LETTERS TO YESENIN: 2; TO ROSE, by JAMES HARRISON


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LETTERS TO YESENIN: 2; TO ROSE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: I don't have any medals. I feel their lack
Last Line: Steam pipes running along the ceiling. The rope.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Poetry & Poets; Regret; Suicide; Yesenin, Sergei (1895-1925)


I don't have any medals. I feel their lack
of weight on my chest. Years ago I was ambitious.
But now it is clear that nothing will happen.
All those poems that made me soar along a foot
from the ground are not so much forgotten as never
read in the first place. They rolled like moons
of light into a puddle and were drowned. Not even
the puddle can be located now. Yet I am encouraged
by the way you hung yourself, telling me that such
things don't matter. You, the fabulous poet of
Mother Russia. But still, even now, school girls
hold your dead heart, your poems, in their laps
on hot August afternoons by the river while they wait
for their boyfriends to get out of work or their
lovers to return from the army, their dead pets to
return to life again. To be called to supper. You
have a new life on their laps and can scent their
lavender scent, the cloud of hair that falls
over you, feel their feet trailing in the river,
or hidden in a purse walk the Neva again. Best of all
you are used badly like a bouquet of flowers to make
them shed their dresses in apartments. See those
steam pipes running along the ceiling. The rope.





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