THE ROMANOVS AND SERGEI YESENIN
DID YOU KNOW that Russia’s tragic young poet Sergei Yesenin once worked as a medical attendant at the Grand Duchesses’ Maria and Anastasia’s infirmary in 1917? He also served in their military-medical train #143.
In June of 1916, Yesenin was invited to read his poetry in front of the imperial family, and he performed this poem, which he dedicated to the young Grand Duchesses:
In crimson glow the sunset,
Effervescent and foamy,
White birches shine in their diadems
My verse greets the Young Princesses
And the young gentleness in their affectionate hearts.
Where shadows are pale and sorrowful suffering,
They stretch August hands to Him who went to suffer for us,
Blessing their future life time… On a white bed, in a bright glare of light
He whose life they wish to bring back is sobbing …
And infirmary walls are quaking
From pity, that compresses their chest
Invincible hand draws them closer
Where sorrow lays a seal upon a forehead.
Oh, pray, Holy Magdalene,
For their fate.
1916
This poem was banned after the Bolshevik revolution. Sergei Yesenin died young, not quite 30 years old: he committed suicide.
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