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Deutsch and Yarmolinsky, comps. Modern Russian Poetry. 1921.

Sonnet XV

Maximilian Voloshin (b. 1877)

PURE pearl of silence brooding on the sky,

Presider o’er conception, lamp of dreams,

Altar of nightly spells, of crystal gleams,

Queen of the waters where thou lov’st to lie,

With what desire, where the long waves sigh,

Through my dark crucifixions, toward thy beams,

Toward Dian, toward fierce Hecate, there streams

The vision yet unlived that shall not die.

How strange thy diamond delirium shines

In thy fair hollows, in thy joyless lines,

And in the flashing mica of thy seas.

In listless ether thou art horror’s face,

Thou, longing’s cry, whom icy gaolers freeze,

Thou, dead world’s avid corpse, cast out on space.