Sergei Yesenin Revenant

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

I write your name upon my palm with pen

Yet wish that I might write within my cage

Of ribs, “Yes,” round my inner chest.  “Love men

And women,” is your message.  Age to age

You teach through life, and lines, and suicide

That love — the guts of love — that love . . . belongs

In deepest Russian soil, thus well inside

Romance of Russian hearts and in the songs

Of lost romantic landscapes.  If it ends in death

(Love being love), the final meaning lives

Unliving.  Deeper than the final breath

The cosmos breathes, love whispers, “Love forgives.”

  Hold Klyuevs and the dancers in your bed.

    The doctrine of gold souls seeps, widely spread.

©  Phillip Whidden