essence in Surikov

Folder: 
Dead Poets

 

 

"essence in Surikov"

 

 

He wrote it as the warmth left his hand,

a red‑warm script rising from within,

as though the line itself carried breath:

"In this life it is not new to die,"


spoken with the calm of someone

who has watched winter iterating

its familiar pattern for centuries,

each return neither omen nor surprise,

just the world continuing its old motion.

 

"But neither is it new to be alive,"

and here the words shift their weight—

not brighter, not louder,

but opening a quiet passage

where another way of making

steps forward without ceremony.

 

From there, the thought rallies toward

a way of making that masters the familiar

through observant contemplation,

shaping what is here by returning to it,

touch after touch,

until the red‑warm script

settles into ink

that congeals with a rising, breathing wind.

 

 

 

.

 

Author's Notes/Comments: 

On 28 December, 1925, Sergei Aleksandrovich Esenin expires by his own hand at the Hotel d'Angleterre in Leningrad, aged 31. The quote in this poem was written in his own blood. 

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