Like some faint ray through hells of dark foreboding-
Such is your voice amid the crash of shells exploding.(1)

And, like some seraph, still, amid the noise,
He tells us in that strangely toneless voice

—Born of the morning mists of old—explains us
How he has loved us—we, the blind, the nameless—

For dark-blue cape, for perfidy—and sin...
And-most of all—for her caught deepest in

The toils of night—for her dire deeds' dark muster!
And how he has not ceased to love you, Russia!

Then runs his finger—distant, lost in thought—
Across his temple... Aye, and tells us what

Bleak days await us, and how God will fail us,
When we call on the sun—no sun shall hail us...

A lonely prisoner in his private keep,
(Or is it some child talking in his sleep?)

So spake to us—the whole assembled flock!—
The sacred heart of Alexander Blok.

April 1920

1 This detail is authentic: the sound of explosions from
the Khodynka and a rain of splintering glass accompanied
us as we went—he, on to the platform, we—into the hall.
But over and above this authentic aspect [there was] —the
crash of exploding shells from the Revolution.

M. Ts.