Loss by Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Russia has lost Russia in Russia.

Russia searches for itself

like a cut finger in snow,

a needle in a haystack,

like an old blind woman madly stretching her

hand in fog,

searching with hopeless incantation for her lost

milk cow.

We buried our icons.

We didn’t believe in our own great books.

We fight only with alien grievances.

Is it true that we didn’t survive under our own

yoke,

becoming for ourselves worse than foreign

enemies?

Is it true that we are doomed to live only in the silk

nightgown of dreams, eaten by moths? --

Or in numbered prison robes?

Is it true that epilepsy is our national character?

Or convulsions of pride?

Or convulsions of self-humiliation?

Ancient rebellions against new copper kopecks,

against such foreign fruits as potatoes are

now only a harmless dream.

Today’s rebellion swamps the entire Kremlin

like a mortal tide--

Is it true that we Russians have only one

unhappy choice?

The ghost of Tsar Ivan the Terrible?

Or the Ghost of Tsar Chaos?

So many imposters. Such “imposterity.”

Everyone is a leader, but no one leads.

We are confused as to which banners and

slogans to carry.

And such a fog in our heads

that everyone is wrong

and everyone is guilty in everything.

We already have walked enough in such fog,

in blood up to our knees.

Lord, you’ve already punished us enough.

Forgive us, pity us.

Is it true that we no longer exist?

Or are we not yet born?

We are birthing now,

But it’s so painful to be born again.

[1991]

--TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY JAMES RAGAN AND YEVGENY YEVTUSHENKO

From “20th Century Russian Poetry: Silver and Steel: An Anthology,” edited by Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward (Anchor Books: 1,078 pp., $19.95 paper)