whole –

with a whisper of ordering of the firmament

and as out of the shining face

in a time of sorrow –

mine –

I create it

and by fire

concealing images of the race

it is lit

1965

The poems here date from the extremely fruitful first decade of his activity as a Russian poet. They were written in Moscow, where he was employed in the Mayakovsky museum to organize exhibitions of the Russian avant-garde artists of the early years of the twentieth century. At this time, he was part of a Moscow “underground” of poets, musicians and artists, all living in poverty and supporting one another in their attempts to create an independent art. None of these poems appeared in print in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s.

-Peter France