Yevgeny Yevtushenko Poems

I’ve stopped drinking.
I love my wife.
My own wife- I insist on this.
Living so like an angel,
...

Here is what is happening to me:
my old friend doesn't come to visit,
and in idle vanity
come various folk, not those who should.
...

I came to the cemetery in the hazy heat of autumn,
where the crosses creak as they split,
to my grandmother-Maria Iosefovna-
and bought flowers at the gate.
...

The ice had not even begun to break,
no boat could possibly sail yet,
but the letters lay in a pile at the post office,
with all their requests and instructions.
...

Love unrequited is a crushing yoke;
but if you see love as a game,
a trophy,
then unrequited love’s absurd, a joke-
...

This girl comes from New York
but she does not belong.
Along the neon lights, this girl
runs away from herself.
...

In the burgh of Kharkov-
bursting hail.
Big hail,
big as grape,
...

The bellow of a steamer in the morning
woke the coniferous distances,
...

I have been wounded so often and so painfully,
dragging my way home at the merest crawl,
impaled not only by malicious tongues-
one can be wounded even by a petal.
...

The flower of a fighting toro
...