The Evening Song | Olga Sedakova's Official Web Site


POETRY

PROSE

ESSAYS

INTERVIEW

From the book Kliazma and Yauza

From the book The Wild Rose

From the book Tristan and Isolde

From the book Old Songs

From the book Gates. Windows. Arches

From the book Stanzas in the Manner of Alexander Pope

From the book Stellae and Inscriptions

From the book The Iambic Verses

The Chinese Travelogue

From An Unfinished Book

From the book The Evening Song

From the book Elegies

From the book The Beginning of a Book

From the book The Evening Song

(1996-2005)

All the Works

Turrets to the sides, lookout towers, steeples,
stony darkness.
All the works which have been loved
or conceived for ages –

nickel and aluminum, stepladders,
those pawn-brokers of the height –
the tender eyes of the Dormition and St. Sophia¹,
o earth, will you shut even them? –

a furious whirlwind will scatter
all the works as it should be...
Or Mercy, have your hands not touched them
along with our own hands?

Slava I. Yastremski and Michel Naydan

¹ The tender eyes of the Dormition and St. Sophia - is a reference to a Cathedral of the Dormition of the Mother of God (most likely the one in the Moscow Kremlin) and the Cathedrals of St. Sophia in Kiev and Novgorod.

All the Works

A Childhood Visit to a Village

In Memory of Father Alexander Men’