Status Updates From Moscow in the Plague Year: ...

“Some fragrances / are like commands” (p. 196). “Accomplishing the poem, what / else can the poet do but die?” (p. 208). “Owlets need the night, / and sleepless people need their sleeplessness” (p. 225).

"Some fragrances
are like commands." [page 196]

" While your eyes follow me into the grave,
write up the whole caboodle on my cross!
‘Her days began with songs,
ended in tears,
but when she died,
she split her sides with laughter!’ "

😂 hmm, it seems, it's quite impossible on Goodreads to replicate the proper formatting of verse. Having attempted X3 - with a line each time being unformatted - I'll throw in the towel.
Still, it matters.

"They’re colourless, and like the flocks
..........
of pigeons, quite incapable "

2 separate lines

"just outside our attic window.
Pigeons knock against the pane –
what use are they as company?
The passing winds shout me their greeting –
what good is that? Winds, on your way!
They’re colourless, and like the flocks
of pigeons,
quite incapable of saying,
in the wonder-working tones that you would use:
‘Marina!’

November 1919

"just outside our attic window.
Pigeons knock against the pane –
what use are they as company?
The passing winds shout me their greeting – what good is that? Winds, on your way!
They’re colourless, and like the flocks
of pigeons, quite incapable
of saying, in the wonder-working tones that you would use:
‘Marina!’ "

November 1919

"just outside our attic window.
Pigeons knock against the pane –
what use are they as company?
The passing winds shout me their greeting – what good is that? Winds, on your way!
They’re colourless, and like the flocks
of pigeons, quite incapable
of saying, in the wonder-working tones that you would use:
'Marina!’ "

November 1919

Those entering the world clench small hands tight:
they’re like aggressors, bent upon attack!
Those entering the earth have open palms—
all of our regiments got smashed to bits!

[from another set called “Four-Liners”]

Battling to get out of passion’s rut,
a day will dawn on which I’ll say: ‘No loving!’
Where, in the calendar of centuries,
are you, though, day on which I’ll say: ‘No poems!’?
[from a set called “Four-Liners”]

Distractions can be destructive. A poem of a few hundred lines came to Coleridge in a dream. When he awoke, he remembered it and began writing it down. Then a neighbor dropped in. By the time he left, Coleridge could no longer remember the rest of the poem. This was the origin of “Kubla Khan,” which is only a few dozen lines in length.

“Poems for Sonechka,” No. 9:

Don’t lose your temper, angel from Heaven,
if it turns out that the truth was a lie.
People don’t look to the wind for straight answers,
nightingales singing can distort the truth.