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Variation on a Poem by Blok

How hard it is to walk among the living
And make like you are not already dead,
And speak up apropos of life’s misgiving
To generations shrouded out ahead.

And, looking straight into your own bad dreams,
How hard to find peace in the chaos there,
So others in a poem’s faded beams
Might catch the little afterglow to spare.

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Stephen M. Dickey is a Slavic linguist at the University of Kansas. He has published widely on Slavic verbal categories, and has published translations of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian fiction and poetry including Meša Selimović’s Death and the Dervish, Borislav Pekić’s How to Quiet a Vampire, and Miljenko Jergović’s Ruta Tannenbaum. He has published poetry in various journals including Shot Glass Journal, Trinacria, The Lyric, Rat’s Ass Review, Lighten Up Online, Better Than Starbucks, Asses of Parnassus, and Blue Unicorn.

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7 Responses

    • Stephen M. Dickey

      Thanks for your comment. “Shrouded” was in fact an intentional departure.

      Reply
  2. Maria

    Thank you for this lovely poem. And thank you for introducing me to Blok. I don’t know if anyone else feels this way but it has made me want to write a poem after this style.
    You might say I have caught just a little of the afterglow, or there again you might say I am being
    presumptuous..

    How hard it is to walk beside the dead
    And pay heed to trivia whilst in shock
    that often pain comes from false friends
    who wound with false advise and mock.

    And, looking straight into your own misdeeds
    think how hard it is to find redemption
    except through helping others to foresee
    the dull but deadly pain of insurrection.

    Reply
    • Stephen M. Dickey

      Maria, thank you very much, and I am glad you found my post useful. Blok is primarily known for his symbolist poetry (I don’t think I would consider this to be representative).
      What you’ve done is something I take great pleasure in doing—taking a foreign language poem as a point of departure and making one’s own creation while sticking to the form, with related thoughts.
      I find your poem quite intriguing in its theme and implementation, and impressive for what can only have been a few hours since my post. I am particularly struck by your use of “insurrection” in rhyme with “redemption”—I assume you mean it in a less common sense of ‘upheaval’? Thanks for the poem.

      Reply
      • Maria

        Thank you for your very kind comment, your poem has been more than useful , it has been an inspiration. I believe that I have used resurrection as meaning rebellion but rebellion against God. It sort of ties in, or at least I hope it does, with the dead as being spiritually dead and also with its ties to resurrection and the need for redemption.
        I hindsight I am not sure whether the word scoff is better than mock and whether instead of pain of insurrection the path of insurrection would read better. Yes I did rush in but what is poetry if it does not enthuse!

  3. Margaret Coats

    Stephen, I find your final lines much more satisfying than those in the translation to which Ivy so kindly links us. These undertake to connect art with experience for a man definitely in a somber and maybe desperate mood. They represent a creative effort and a social connection at the limit of his capability. Well done to maintain uncertainty about whether this could be a good thing!

    Reply
    • Stephen M. Dickey

      Margaret, thank you. Your comment is very interesting, because you picked up on one of the things I did not want to take from Blok’s original. “Life’s fatal blaze” or some such has a little too much opera! for me personally. Maybe it’s me, or the times and culturally-conditioned sensitivities are different.

      Reply

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