Limes with Orange

I finally found the Yevtushenko poem that I was looking for the other day. I was reminded of it during a discussion with a friend about the inability that many of us have to forgive ourselves. For the life of me, I can't figure out which book of poetry it's from (unless I have some poetry books still in storage), but fortunately I'd copied this one into an old journal of mine:

The first presentiment of a poem
In a real poet
Is the feeling of sin
Committed somewhere, sometime.

Even if that sin was not his—
He considers himself guilty,
His navel connects him
To all the tribes of mankind.

And no longer his own master
He runs away from glory and ecstasy
With his head ready to admit guilt
But nevertheless held high.

The casualties of war and peace,
Every broken branch,
Builds up in him a feeling of guilt,
His guilt, not just that of the age.

And his life is frightful to him—
He feels it as sinful as sin itself.
Every woman is his guilt,
A gift which cannot be returned.

Shame always moves the poet,
Thrusting him into boundless space,
And he builds bridges with his bones,
Paying what is unpayable.

And there—and there, at the end of his path
Which is there and cannot be escaped,
He will say: "God forgive me..."
Not having any hopes that this will be so.

And his soul will pass from his body,
And descend into hell, indifferent to paradise—
Forgiven by God, but never
Forgiven by himself.

Labels: poetry