dots-menu
×

Home  »  Modern Russian Poetry  »  Fyodor Sologub (Pseudonym of Fyodor Teternikov) (b. 1863)

Deutsch and Yarmolinsky, comps. Modern Russian Poetry. 1921.

“Austere the Music of My Songs”

Fyodor Sologub (Pseudonym of Fyodor Teternikov) (b. 1863)

AUSTERE the music of my songs:

The echo of sad utterance fills them,

A bitter breath, far-wafted, chills them;

And is my back not bent to thongs?

The mists of day on darkness fall;

The vainly promised land I follow

Upon a road the shadows swallow;

The world rears round me like a wall.

At times from that far land the vain

Faint voice will sound like distant thunder.

Can long abeyance of a wonder

Obliterate the long bleak pain?