Aleksandr Blok Visits Liza Sudina

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!