Yevgeny Yevtushenko Poems

'You have courage, ' they tell me.
It's not true. I was never courageous.
I simply felt it unbecoming
to stoop to the cowardice of my colleagues.
...

I envy. This secret
I have not revealed before.
I know there is somewhere a boy
whom I greatly envy.
...

The twentieth century has often fooled us.
We've been squeezed in by falsehood as by taxes.
The breath of life has denuded our ideas
as quickly as it strips a dandelion.
...

Lying to the young is wrong.
Proving to them that lies are true is wrong.
Telling them
that God’s in his heaven
...

Whenever the wind
drops an alder catkin into my palm,
or a cuckoo calls merrily,
with trains screaming by,
...

We are dwarf birches.
We sit firmly, like splinters,
under the nails of frosts
...

To K. Vanshenkin

Our railway car was like a gypsy camp.
Raucous shouting everywhere.
...

No monument stands over Babii Yar.
A dropp sheer as a crude gravestone.
I am afraid.
Today I am as old in years
...

We are sitting at an airport
in Copenhagen drinking a lot of coffee.
It was most elegant there, and comfortable,
and refined to the point of lassitude.
...

Mother, let me congratulate you on
the birthday of your son.
You worry so much about him. Here he lies,
he earns little, his marriage was unwise,
...