I
Lenin, to sing to you
I must say farewell to words:
I must write with trees, with wheels,
with plows, with cereals.
You’re concrete
as facts and earth.
There never was
a more earthly man
than V. Ulyanov.
There are other imposing men
who like churches are used to
conversing with the clouds,
they are tall, solitary men.
Lenin made a pact with the earth.
He came from farther away than anyone,
People,
rivers, hills,
steppes,
were an open book,
and he read,
read farther than anyone,
clearer than anyone.
He looked deeply
into the people,
admired them like a well,
examined them as
they were an unknown mineral
he had discovered.
Water needed to be taken from the well,
the dynamic light needed to be elevated,
the secret treasure
of the people,
so everything germinated and hatched
to be worthy of time and earth.
II
Beware of confusing him with a frigid
engineer,
beware of confusing him with an
ardent mystic.
His intelligence blazed without
becoming ashes,
death has yet to freeze his heart of fire.
III
I like seeing Lenin fishing in the
clearness
of Lake Lakhta, and those waters are
like a small mirror lost amid the grass
of the vast, cold, organized north:
those solitudes, disdainful solitudes,
processing plants martyred by night
and snow,
the arctic whistle of the wind in its
cabin.
I like seeing him there alone listening
to the rain shower, the trembling flight
of turtledoves,
the intense pulsation of the pristine
forest,
Lenin attentive to the forest and life,
listening to the wind’s steps and to
history
in the solemnity of nature.
IV
Some men were only good for studying,
deep book, passionate science,
and other men had
as their virtue the soul of the movement.
Lenin had two wings:
wisdom and the movement.
He created by means of thought,
deciphered enigmas,
went on breaking the masks
of truth and man
and was everywhere,
was simultaneously in all places.
IX
Thank you, Lenin,
for the energy and the teachings,
thank you for the firmness,
thank you for the Leningrad and the steppes.
[…]
Thank you, Lenin,
for the hope.