Three Poems by the Great Sergei Yesenin

By: Poetic Outlaws

In this world you can
search for everything,
except Love and death. 
They find you when the 
time comes.
~ Sergei Yesenin

---

Sergei Yesenin was a Russian poet born in 1895 who allegedly took his own life at the young age of 30 years old. He's regarded as one of the most important Russian poets of all time.

Yessin wrote lyrically about the "wretched people, undone by life." He wrote about the sights and sounds of the countryside, the "clanging of hooves on the snow" and the "bitter tears" of the "evening silence." His poetry focused on nature and traditional rural life along with the complexities of the human condition. 

According his translator, Anton Yakovlev: 

“While Yesenin’s staggering erudition, energy, and poetic lyricism had made an immediate meteoric impact on the literary scene of his time, much of his short adult life occurred during on of the most terrifying, cataclysmic periods in the history of the world, in a country that was undergoing unrest of unprecedented proportions.”

While alive, Yesenin was widely popular among his compatriots. Everyone in Russia knew who he was and they recited his poems from memory all across the land. 

His iconic status endures to this day.  

He was a life-liver, a rabble-rouser, a ladies man, a three-time failed husband, a barroom brawler, a hooligan, and a fierce observer of the landscape that he was born in.  

In 1925, in a period of intense creativity, the poet mysteriously hanged himself in a hotel room after writing his final poem in his own blood.

It was Nietzsche who once said, “Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit.”

However, some people are convinced that Yesenin was murdered by the authoritarian leaders of his country.  His "unqualified" influence made them nervous.       Historically speaking, society tends to murder its dreamers and seers so it’s not out of the question. 

 According to one article: 

“Yesenin was so famous that his death triggered a wave of copycat suicides. The communist authorities, who viewed Esenin’s poetry with suspicion for its individualism and “hooliganism,” reacted strongly, and his books were banned for many years after his death. Students who read his poems could be expelled from university, and distributing manuscript copies of his poems was punished with jail time.

Esenin’s spirit could not be repressed, however, and he remains a poet of the people to this day: tragic, flawed, with a romantic style to match his image.”

Below are a few of my favorite untitled poems from the unrivaled Russian poet.