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About These Verses
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✦ 11 ✦ About These Verses On pavements I will pound them out Of sun and glass combined; In winter, let the loft resound As mildewed corners read my lines. The attic will itself declaim, With bow to wintry window frame, And up to ledge and roof will rise A leap of wonders, woes, and signs. A month and more the storm will sweep And blur where things begin and end. I’ll recollect the sun!—and see: The world has changed again. Then Christmas, like a daw, will peer, And fresh carousing day will show My love and me a host of things We never dreamed to know. In scarf, with hand before my eyes, I’ll shout outdoors and ask the kids: Oh tell me, dear ones, if you please, Just what millennium this is? Who beat a pathway to my door, That hole all blocked with snow, While I with Byron had a smoke And drank with Edgar Poe? ✦ 12 ✦ While in Daryál, as with a friend, In hell, in arsenals of truth, I dipped—like Lérmontov in dread, Like lips—my life in life’s vermouth. Daryal, a gorge in the Caucasus through which the Terek River flows, is the locale for several poems by Lermontov. ...