My groom and friend came from afar.
I kiss your feet!
He drew his circle around me.
I kiss your hands!
...
We were four sisters, four sisters were we,
All four of us loved, but had different "becauses:"
One loved because father and mother told her to,
another loved because her lover was rich,
...
In the feathergrass steppe
Sources lie buried,
The thirsty sun knows
Life isn't raspberries.
...
When someone says: "Alexandria,"
I see the white walls of a house,
a small garden row of gillyflowers,
an autumn evening's pale sunlight
...
Ah, I am leaving Alexandria
and will not see it for a long time!
I will see Cyprus, dear to the Goddess,
I will see Tyre, Epheses and Smyrna,
...
Through tannic steam I catch a glimpse of Fuji:
Against a yellow sky volcanic gold
A saucer narrows nature very strangely,
In shallow ripples lovely to behold.
...
The sense of your bidding is unclear:
to pray, to curse, is it, to fight
you bid me, inscrutable genius?
The spring slackens, niggard, meager,
...
Where will I find words to describe our stroll,
The Chablis on ice, the toasted bread
And the sweet agate of ripe cherries?
Sunset is far off, and the sea resounds with
...
I gather motley flowers
And braid, braid a garland,
Sharp spears fall
At your victorious feet.
...
Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin (1872–1936) was a symbolist poet, prose writer, and playwright. Openly gay, he wrote the first celebrations of gay themes in Russian literature, and the first Russian coming-out novel, Wings (1907), in which a young man learns to accept his sexuality, which makes him feel as if he has grown wings. Kuzmin too was a poet who mined his own biography, incorporating its associations and events in his poem-cycles. As censorship tightened and ideological wars raged in proletarian literature, Kuzmin's diary (1906-1934) chronicled a life lived through sexuality, art and contemplation of the everyday. His finest autobiographical poem cycle, The Trout Breaks through the Ice (published in 1928) demonstrated the muscularity and range of his mature voice, and evoked a reply from Anna Akhmatova, her famous Poem without a Hero. Mikhail Kuzmin died on March 1, 1936 of pneumonia.)
My Groom And Friend
My groom and friend came from afar.
I kiss your feet!
He drew his circle around me.
I kiss your hands!
Light seems to set the world apart.
I kiss your armor!
And earth's idols do not attract me.
I kiss your wings!
The yoke of love is light and sweet.
I kiss your shoulders!
Your brand is burned upon my heart.
I kiss your lips!