---

When all is said and done, no literature can outdo the cynicism of real life; you won't intoxicate with one glass someone who has already drunk up a whole barrel. - Anton Chekhov

---

	   THIS RUSSIAN SOIL

			In all the world no people are so tearless,
			So proud, so simple as are we.
                                              1922

 In lockets for a charm we do not wear it,
 In verse about its sorrows do not weep,
 With Eden's blissful vales do not compare it,
 Untroubled does it leave our bitter sleep.
 To traffic in it is a thought that never,
 Not even in our hearts, remote, takes root.
 Before our eyes its image does not hover,
 Though  we be beggared, sick, despairing, mute.
     It's the mud on our shoes, it is rubble,
     It's the sand on our teeth, it is slush,
     It's the pure, taintless dust that we crumble,
     That we  pound, that we mix, that we crush.
 But it's ours, our own, and will open one day
 To receive and embrace us and turn us to clay.

1961