The True Poet Poem by Daniel Brick

He is free as the wind, that wind
Penetrated his soul,
Over the years entered his poems
To sing of fair weather and foul.
Boris Pasternak

Those who knew him, knew him
as a difficult man to love,
but love him they did.
Those who read him year after year
struggled reading each new poem,
but they never stopped. What did
they know the rest of us forgot:
that he alone among us accepted
the Necessity of Sacrifice...
He had to eat, he had to sleep,
needed comforting, cried out in pain -
In such things he was one of us,
perhaps even just like us. But his soul
extended so far beyond ours. It touched
boundaries unknown, crossed thresholds
invisible. With his guardian angel
he watched the dawn's earliest rays.
A woman exuding mist and sweet perfume
placed a treasure deep in his soul.
In a whirlwind of snow he saw Jesus Christ
walking ahead of the Twelve, the Christ
of the Gospels whom he might have followed
out of the blizzard. But he stayed in our midst,
and what an agony he suffered for so long,
for our benefit, our health of being. In the slow
end, he simply collapsed into pieces. How did
he remain whole as long as he did? Oh, pray
for him, pray for us....

ALEKSANDR BLOK
IN MEMORIAM