Last Love Poem by gershon hepner

Ah, when our last years come in sight,
love’s onset can turn out to be less ominous
if finally we get it right
and of a dominatrix are the dominus.

Inspired by Alan Myers’s translation of the first stanza of Tyutchev “Last Love” (1852-1854) , taken from his “Denisieva Cycle, ” dedicated toa woman twenty-three years younger than the poet, with who he carried on an illicit love affair until she died of tuberculosis, and cited by Alexander Nemser in a review of “Verses and Versions: Centuries of Russian Poetry, ” translated by Vladimir Nabokov, edited by Brian Boyd and Stanislav Shvabrin (TNR, March 4,2009) :

Ah, when our last years come in sight,
How sweet, how ominous love's onset...
Shine on, shine on, departing light,
As love's last gleaming fades to sunset.

2/21/09