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Home  »  Modern Russian Poetry  »  Vyacheslav Ivanov (b. 1866)

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

The Catch

Vyacheslav Ivanov (b. 1866)

NOW the golden leafage is beggared.

Shining through the porches of autumn,

Shows the cool blue stillness of heaven.

Lo, the thin-trunked grove is transcended:

Carved in stone, a columned cathedral.

Smoke-scrolls wind about the frail friezes;

Flung above the doors is a curtain—

Open-work: like nets of God’s fishers

That the catch has slipped through and broken,

Like thy tatters, sacred and lovely,

At the entrance of a white temple,

Oh thou golden mendicant music!