“We can’t stand…” by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
"We can't stand…"
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Translated by Albert C. ToddWe can’t stand sitting still.
We try, no holds barred, to be liked
by ourselves, friends, the opposition, and the authorities
(I no longer even speak about women).Then we want to be liked by the country,
then the earth’s globe and the epoch,
then by our descendants, and, as a result
our own wives don’t like us.
MARGINALIA
Ha!, I say. Ha! The world needs more Yevtushenkos.
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SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in The Collected Poems, 1952-1990 by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, published by Henry Holt & Co, 1991. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)
ABOUT YEVGENY YEVTUSHENKO
Yevgeny Yevtushenko was born on July 18, 1933, in the Irkutsk region of Siberia, and he grew up there and in Moscow. In 1956 Yevtushenko published a long poem, “Zima Junction,” about his hometown in Siberia; this poem was criticized by the press for its portrayal of the post-Stalin Soviet Union. In 1961 he published his best-known poem, “Babi Yar,” which famously denounced Russian anti-Semitism and inspired Dimitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13. Yevtushenko published numerous… (more)
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ENDNOTES
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