A Poet In Russia - Prison And Exile, Poem by Liza Sud

Your title PRISON AND EXILE refers to the earthly fate of poets under Bolshevism, but that dark destiny is redeemed in your last line: I WILL GO OUT AS A SAINT. / THAT'S HOW THE RUSSIANS WANT TO SEE THEIR POETS. A government, promising for seventy years to create a workers' paradise on earth, making war for all those years against its own people - but the poets kept another vision of Russia alive through all that suffering! ! You are part of that victory.//As a young man Yevtushenko met an emigre poet in Paris: how could they communicate with such different lives? Yevtushenko wrote: WHAT UNITED US? THE COMMON SPIRITUAL HOMELAND WAS RUSSIAN POETRY. IT REMAINED UNCHANGED DESPITE THE MADNESS OF SOVIET HISTORY. RUSSIAN CULTURE IS ALWAYS A SINGLE WHOLE. Amen to that.