Aleksandr Blok Visits Liza Sudina Poem by Daniel Brick

A Fantasy for Liza

We made good use of it, did't we?
The four-line stanza, the stanza of Russian Poetry!
And now, more than one hundred years later, I see YOU
turning your life into poetry, into poems in quatrains.
I feel my life extended in yours, and
your creativity carries mine forward
into a new century. Are we not sentinels
assigned to guard the Russian language
for a time of service, and then to withdraw
when others replace us? Will the ones coming after
be better, deeply meshed into this new century?
Only we poets can know the truth of a poet's life:
we pay for every moment of success, don't we?
Inwardly rich, outwardly poor,
our closest relatives are the Saints
Perhaps at times of special grace,
we and they are one...

It's amazing how quickly we who are
no longer breathing beings adjust
to our new circumstances. I assure you, Liza,
if you are a human being, truly and fully
a child of God, you will know peace. But when
I try to speak of these metaphysical matters,
my voice is dry and choked. It is a sign that I am
under a Law of Silence. But you know this already:
you have read Daniel Andreeve, and he sends you a holy kiss.

My presence is a thing apart. You don't need me
to achieve your heavenly crown. I need you!
Oh, my earthly life was vexed by so much unrest,
so many quarrels, so many failures in love.
I have seen your heart expand often to receive or give,
and my troubled soul has witnessed the seasons
of your heart-harvest of what is good and true.

I slipped further and further in darkness, I supported
the strongest faction in the Civil War and the darkness
increased as my insight was blinded. And my outsight
was deceived by the blandishments of those Bosheviks
I celebrated in THE TWELVE. How I regret putting
Jesus Christ in that poem! It was further darkness,
then three years with no writing of poems, then despair,
then - death. Such was my ruin...

It was the LIGHT shining inside your poems that reached me,
with a quiet summons. I cast off despair. I listened
with hope. When you wrote, OH, GOD, TEACH US TO BE BETTER
BY YOUR LIGHT, I was there. When you wrote, GOD MIRRORS US
IN ALL OUR TURNS, WHERE EVERY MOTION IS LOVE, I was there.
When you wrote, GRACE WILL COME UPON US, I was there.
I followed the traces of LIGHT faithfully and found myself
at the Gates of Paradise. St. John stood nearby, calm and
shining. A figure of Light himself, he prepared me
to become my New Self... When you write, POETRY ALWAYS
SINGS, I am there! Make good use of it!