The Sense Of Your Bidding



The sense of your bidding is unclear:
to pray, to curse, is it, to fight
you bid me, inscrutable genius?
The spring slackens, niggard, meager,
and Benozzo Gozzoli's courier
dozes in the drowsy thickets.

  Hills are dark with honeyed cloud.
Look: I do not touch lithe strings.
Your gaze, prophetically flying,
is clenched, gushes no winged streams,
and beckons by no May road, trying
to outstrip Hermes in his flight.

  Hobbled horses do not neigh,
Aging warriors sprawl in disarray...
Hold your palms open wide!
Risen spring is bright,
but groves of darkness are not given
to leap for joy having leapt from dreams.

  The groom names not the hour,
be not guiled to tarry,
hark through ice the clarion voice,
your flax is drenched with chrism,
and, bidding goodbye to numb laze,
free, in love, you will rise.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

42 sec read
54

Quick analysis:

Scheme XABCCX XXDEDA XXXAXE CXXXBX
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 791
Words 141
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6, 6

Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin

Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin was a Russian poet, musician and novelist, a prominent contributor to the Silver Age of Russian Poetry. more…

All Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin poems | Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin Books

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