I.
“Sometimes I was wrong,
but not on purpose
—sorry,
I was living for the first time on this Earth.
—Robert Rozhdestvensky
“La vida de Evtushenko es un saco, lleno de las balas y de los besos.”
“The life of Yevtushenko is a sack, stuffed with bullets and kisses.”
—Gonzalo Arango (Columbian Poet), from his book, El oso y el colibri1
…………….
My dreams are trying to pick off
the dry scab of a gnawing-sweet old wound,
it is as if Márquezian Columbia is caressing my head
with your,
Dora Franco,
almost weightless hand.
Before you there was no woman as beautiful as you,
even though all whom I had loved
were so much better than me.
But not one of them was so young and pre-historical,
and not one so Indian and ideal
as you,
daughter of the First Fire,
created by a kindling of wood.

1
From Arango’s book, The Bear and the Hummingbird.
3
II.
In Sixty Eight I was half-dead,
as if suffocated by black smoke.
I wanted to slap so many mugs,
sometimes even my own.
In Sixty Eight everything was confused,
everything swept down and blown away.
I had never been afraid of Big Brother’s Eye,
but was afraid of my own eyes in the mirror.
I was living a life tied up into a dead knot,
a noose woven of three loves
twisted around my neck.
I had abandoned three beloveds,
I didn’t kiss them enough.
I didn’t love them enough.
All loves are unique
when the same avalanche buries them at once.
I always admired love in one full breath,
but in Sixty Eight I was suffocating in airless airs
where everything was burning—
in love and in politics,
when you couldn’t walk on the water
because even water flamed.
The iron curtain was white hot,
but I jumped through a crack in the fire,
stripping my skin against its rusty cuticles.
I was not standardized
but was instead slanderized.
Death was inviting me
from all ceilings with a hook
before a Nerudian hand
4
found me and pulled me to Chile
where I was reborn.
How did the poetry recitation with Pablo go?
It was a duet of two musics—
my Russian, lapping like the Volga,2
merging slowly, softly into Spanish.
Our duo-poetry was so beautiful.
Camarada Allende, not yet president,3
like a student rolling his R’s
was repeating in Russian
the lines from my poem about hail:
“V grade Charkove grad, grad…
krupen, grad, kak vinograd”
4
In Columbia
I landed like Russian grad,
Russian hail,
my invisible red flag
lifted like a dangerous sail.
And when I saw Bogota
it was a charmingly terrible cocktail
mixed with the beauty and ugliness
of angel’s smiles and scum’s swears.
I was flying though Montevideo
seeing only nasty dreams,
catching with my nostrils through thousands of miles
danger’s smell from my dearest Prague.

2
The Volga River is the largest river in Europe, flowing through 11 (including Moscow) of Russia’s 20 largest cities.
3
Salvador Allende was a Chilean physicist and poet. In 1970 he won a close presidential election, becoming the
first democratically elected Marxist to be become president in a Latin America country.
4
“In the city of Karkov there is hail, hail, hailstones as large as grapes.” These lines are from Yevtushenko’s poem
“Hail in Kharkov.”
5
We, idealists, are doomed to be deeply frustrated,
seeing cynics cut our globe into slices
with their sleazy, sharkish missiles
wrapped in speeches for peace.
I mistrust gurus from all extremes,
our curly ideals life cruelly trims.
I mistrust the haughty power of glamour.
I am afraid of the incautious power of the poor
because poverty’s pockets have holes through which
bombs angrily roll and explode poor and rich.
We are tired of trust. Any future “isms”—
any selfish capitalisms, any fake socialisms—
they are not roads ahead, but convulsive schisms
which couldn’t gain even one lonely heart without love.
Love is the only superpower that is above!
Nadaists are something like Nothingists
and Gonzalo was chief of their poet’s tribe.
At the airport he whispered to me,
“I have a gift for you…with most beautiful eyes.”
I thought—this sounds a bit like a trap.
“Has it a name, this gift?”
very carefully I asked.
“Dora Franco.
You were born for each other.
You’ll see.”
I disliked being pushed into any hands.
Many years ago in Paris
I sneaked away from some young matchmakers
who were trying to couple me
with the freshly divorced Brigitte Bardot.
6
They were new leftists from the glamour mag Clarté,
scheming their next great story.
Through the press I guessed
both of our fingers were very bored by that time,
having just taken off our rings not long ago.
Were it not for the laughing of the whole world
I would have given up verses to wear a collar myself
and guide on the leash until my death
her numerous dogs, cats, and even one mongoose.
Let’s come back to those Columbian palms,
where I found myself a poet among the Nadaist tribe.
We performed a ticketless reading in the park.
T-shirts with Che surrounded us like red poppies.
Gonzalo and I performed as two different species,
me the heavy Siberian bear with a weightless colibri.
In the beginning everything was quiet like a church,
but almost immediately that order was blown up.
“Dora Franco has arrived! Dora Franco!”
Then an avalanche of young voices thundered:
“Viva la reina! Long live the queen!”
But their joy was mixed with poisoned whistles.
Someone used a very old method
of transforming a question into spite:
“Dora, how much did your sponsor give you
for your golden stockings?”
From on stage
I didn’t see legs or stockings
or any other priceless details.
I was catching her face in pieces—
lobes pulled down by heavy earrings,
7
little magic corners of eyes and lips—
before all assembled into her face.
Very swanlike her hand tamed the crowd,
and not less than hundreds of Che Guevaras
applauded, whistled, and jumped from t-shirts
on our swaying globe.
My blood began its crazy gallop in my veins
when the nipples of Columbian girls,
sharp as pencils,
began pushing Che Guevara portraits
from their breasts, inviting him for a dance.
What happened after this reading?
Everything conjured in a Márquez story.
I entered a charming, collapsing tavern
which I am sure could write an incredible diary.
Though all applauses had left by this time,
I felt on me somebody’s gaze—
but it was not Márquez.
That evening was very silent,
and yet I heard something tender
like an angels’ chorus over my head.
They were singing without words
but the music didn’t need them.
I saw in the depths of the tavern
a revolving green propeller
of emerald parsley and a most beautiful tease.
She was a very young woman surrounded by five men
with an additional five Che Guevaras on their t-shirts.
In her long black hair there was a living-white lily.
Men were toasting her but she did not hear them,
8
she was pulling me into the black abyss of her eyes.
I was moving, hypnotized toward the green propeller.
She was grinding parsley in her teeth
and her eyes became bigger and bigger
as I kissed the green tail of parsley
and began to grind it too,
moving closer and closer to
the half open grotto of her lips.
It was all a childish game
and as I continued to grind the parsley
I finally reached over the bitter herb,
as if approaching a very small temple,
her sweetly humid, bald lips.
It was risky because all five men plus five Ches
stood tensely stunned.
But I didn’t stop and dived with my eyes
into that black abyss of her two,
full of frightening, trembling temptation
I sensed no refusal in her eyes,
only a wordless command: “Dive in.”
And I did.
It was amazing that I was not killed,
but all five men plus the five Guevaras
were so overwhelmed that they
politely dematerialized.
When I woke up the next morning together with her
she was sleeping like a little baby
in the cradle or on a tiny boat floating nowhere
with its name on the side: All-In.
Even love with a foreigner couldn’t be foreign.
9
I asked her, “What is your name?”
“Dora Franco,” she replied.
We loved each other three days and three nights.
I was she. She was me.
In our crazy purity all the sophistications
of Karma Sutra looked naive.
My body wanted her body
so much that it became like a soul in flesh,
falling down broken in two
at the bottom of both of her eyes.
On the first day,
walking barefoot to the bathroom
I opened the door without knocking
to see Dora shaving light golden hair off her leg,
gracefully putting it on the edge of the bath.
Her leg was invitingly smooth
but her antique straight razor,
though retractable,
was quite dangerous when opened.
Dora looked at me,
blushing in shame and horror,
not having time to cover her breasts.
With a scream she tried to cut
the tiny branches of her veins.
Poor girl, she was ready to cut
the tiny branches of her veins!
Happily, I took the straight razor from her hands.
I opened her lips with my lips as
she was murmuring a prayer—
if I could only not unlove her forever.
Afterwards we were splashing water
10
over the narrow tub where we
joyfully soared into heaven in foam and tears.
We both became babies in a baptismal font,
feeling the angels flying around us,
drying us with their fluttering wings.
We loved each other freely and equally,
as if we were born into a world
with neither amenity nor wars.
Everything happened as predicted by Gonzalo:
“You were born for each other.”
11
III.

To hell with all drug cartels,
all wars with narco barons.
Now the most important event in the world
was that the left shoe of Dora
had unfaithfully escaped
and must be found and punished.
We already found the right shoe,
which was the more obedient of the siblings.
It had found itself and cunningly teased us,
while the left shoe took an illegal holiday.
I was telling Dora’s right shoe,
as if talking to a small child,
“Why are you not searching for her?
Help me find your runaway sister.
Otherwise I will throw even you into the ocean.”
Shaking the right shoe, holding it by a little strap,
I shoved it into the scent of her left sister.
Heavy with wet, heavy sand,
the right shoe fulfilled its task.
For understanding my order I kissed
her black wet nose like a faithful, little dog.
Even after I kissed you Dora,
again with two shoes in your little hands,
I could not save myself and cut the Gordian knot
taut with all of my ex-passions.
What can I do with each priceless one,
when each is so dissimilar from the others?
I am just a lonely, suffering sinner
before a universe of so many eyes,
12
each the most beloved and dearest.
What about God?
I doubt he will be on my side,
he would only sigh and scratch the back of his head,
but he knows, this old cunning matchmaker,
that in the city of Petrozavodsk
my destiny was already going to kindergarten.5

5
A reference to Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s 1986 film, Kindergarten.
13
IV
Forgive me Masha,
my yet unknown Masha,
for the planet at that time
was not yet ours.
It seems that Invisible Márquez,
like another cunning conspirator,
had guided Dora and me
into Ciudad Barranquilla.
Here some years ago the future genius walked barefoot
without his own mother and father,
guided only by his abuelo,
who was the sole caretaker
of his little rebel grandson Gabbito—
who at that time played hooky
with eternity yet on guard with him.
In Barranquilla no less than half the population
introduced themselves as close relatives of Márquez.
They were stuffing my ears with nonstop memoirs
and their Márquez-o-mania was more joyful than
our own boring Marx-o-mania.
According to them,
they were not created by
that Midas of Spanish
but it was they who created him.
Like Ancient Romans entreating
their foreign guests to the Coliseum,
they invited me to the famous Columbian cockfights.
Who were the patricians of these cockfights?
Very decent crooks who deserved to be hung
on only the very best masts,
14
and whose favorite hobby is to scream
peck
peck
peck.
sharper
sharper
sharper.
They don’t notice how they themselves
pecked the air with noses as if they had
become clones of the fighting cocks pecking
sharper
sharper
sharper.
The more dubious beauties waved their painted fans,
blowing their nostrils while enjoying the blood,
squeaking and moaning as if they were making love
sharper
sharper
sharper.
Not only poets against poets,
competing for the Nobel Prize,
not only womanizers
competing for their braggart’s sins,
not only politicians
competing for their ambitions,
not only business jackals
dealing each other into shackles,
even some crazy mothers
were incited against each other,
for money, power and laurels,
incite all like cocks in quarrels.
But the feathers of cocks are so beautiful
15
in the sunrise and in the sunset.
In antique times, Grecian warriors
installed iron combs on the helmets
they would take into battle.
How are you my rooster,
with your baroquean comb,
with your silky little beard
battered by morning dew?
You lived near your baby brother
in the same private shell
where you didn’t notice any threats
in his puffy, yellow visage.
Were you born a killer?
Have you been hatched out
to peck your brother to death?
Where is the brother’s kiss
of your tender beaks?
You should embrace each other
with your wings,
but from all sides of this dirty tavern
the mob screams to incite you both:
Peck.
Peck.
Peck.
Precisely in this manner the howl of the same pack
incited me against my would-be brother poet Joseph,6
with bets placed on all sides of the quarrel.
Who are you, droppers of poison in our ears?
He is now dead and I almost as well
but I hold out hope that by the mercy of God

6
Russian poet and essayist Joseph Brodsky.
16
we will make peace in the sky above.
All wars will evaporate,
life will be reborn,
if inside of ourselves
droppers of poison are erased.
Is it so hopeless to dream
that there could be a different world
where people don’t envy each other,
being in the service of death
for the glory of a Nobel Prize check,
under the screams of the world’s sleazy market:
“Peck.
Peck.
Peck.”
There are more evil deeds
than there are evil people.
So many of the innocent
were almost innocently killed.
Most crimes are not made on purpose.
Even though many wars and revolutions
have ground us like pestle in mortar,
we so-called human beings
continue to peck each other,
welcoming the poison in our ears
until we become enemies like
stupid roosters in a cockfight,
trained and incited for hatred,
never to recover from the
teasing, sweet taste of blood.
All multi-colored combs
from all world democracies
are proudly cockish.
17
The squabbles of all politicians
against each other become so dirty.
For them it is too easy to spit,
throwing from their bloody beaks
unexpected red foam on the betting table.
It is impossible to escape anywhere,
impossible to be deserters
because everywhere there
is a dictator’s regime
made of peacocking male bravura
or the squeak of agitated hens.
Down your proud combs
poor, stupid cockfighters.
It was a quiet night in Baranquilla
with feathers and broken wings
on the little coliseum floor.
Dora caressed one wounded rooster,
washing away the blood from his head,
with only one surviving, alive eye…
She bought him only for a pair of her earrings.
“Tell me about Russia,”
Dora whispered into the darkness.
“It is like your village Macondo,
7
only a little bit bigger.”
“But Macondo doesn’t exist—
it is just written by Márquez..”

7 Macondo is a fictional town described by Gabriel García Márquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967).
18
“Dora, sometimes it seems to me
that Russia exists only as it is written
by Puhskin, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and others.”
“Eugenio, I heard that Márquez once visited Russia.”
“Yes, and I hosted him.”
“How was it?”
19
V
When Márquez came to Russia for the first time,
I brought him to Peredelkino Village, where I lived.
The great Columbian was a pretty prickly leftist,
but in a distinctively South American style.
When I mentioned Pasternak’s tomb was on our way,
a strange grin took shape on the Columbian’s face.
I didn’t see in this reaction anything abnormal,
besides, Márquez was born in the country of cartels,
where everybody who lived under the “United Fruit”8

knew how sweetly handcuffs rubbed your wrists.
I carefully suggested that we visit the tomb of Pasternak.
My guest hesitated before forcing himself to say,
hiding not hatred but clearly unfriendly feelings,
that Pasternak was joyfully consumed by imperialist pen pushers,
who were too happy with his novel like a dog with a sugar bone.
For Márquez all of the scandal about the novel was just a shame
since writers couldn’t control the use their names in such a dogfight.
I admired Marquez, but not like an idol,
and I refused to rat out my Pasternak,
“He didn’t hide Dr. Zhivago like a knife in his boot.”
He knew that ‘the root of beauty is courage.’

8
The United Fruit Company was an American corporation that was accused in the 1960s of exploiting South
American labor.
20
He put pure love above dirty politics.
He put pure love against that sleazy whore—
political correctness.
I couldn’t believe that for you, my dear beloved writer,
that the dogfight of Montagues and Capuletts
could be more important than love?”
Did Pasternak really incite
scandal with his innocent novel?
When western capitalism with Russian feudalism
began to beat each other with his novel
like it was a baseball bat,
Pasternak’s fragile vertebra broke down.
My dear beloved writer, there are no writers in the world
whom bastards from both sides don’t try to use,
but this is not the blame of us writers,
it is our tragedy.
“Shall I make the turn to Pasternak’s tomb or follow straight?”
“To the cemetery,” said Marquez.
He shut up the provincial journalist inside him.
Inside of him woke the Writer.
He walked very carefully when we entered the cemetery,
as if sensitive piano keys were under his feet.
21
Many years ago my father told me,
“Remember how people walk in cemeteries.
It will tell you who they realy are.”
Defiling his hands with fresh golden paint
from the metal fences surrounding the cemetery,
that Midas of prose walked on top toes.
Márquez was sniffling as quietly as possible
when we stopped at before the tomb.
He looked at the tender profile of Pasternak
engraved on the cold, hard stone.
His lips quivered almost imperceptibly,
“How clean everything is around this tomb.”
Afterwards, I began to think
that all countries in the world
as described by their great writers
are even more real, my dear Dora,
than even reality itself.
22
VI.
I was reminded of lessons I learned in school
when the “almighty they” reluctantly permitted me
to visit seductively dangerous pastures abroad.
According to my lessons as I recalled them,
the favorite food of those capitalist crocodiles
living in the foreign waters of Crocodilia
was the disobedient swimmers who had floated
too far from their communist schools.
Any patriotic Soviet citizen adrift in these currents
would be swallowed by the capitalist crocodiles
stalking and lurking in the murky depths.
Such inculcations leave teeth marks of their own
even on the most adventurous of souls.
I said to Dora,
“Listen to me cautiously.
We are a very special country.
If our Big Brother eye found naked photos
of Soviet male citizens enjoying too much
the company of foreign females
there is a very an ancient custom
since the times of Ivan the Terrible.
Do you know what they do, Dora?
They cut offenders’ heads off
early in the morning on Red Square.
But even before the beheading,
they will castrate them on that same square.”
Dora exclaimed as if something was suffocating her:
“You are like a brother to me,
but this is a most uncivilized execution
because it is impossible to hear together
23
the words: ‘poet’ and ‘castrate.’”
Even as I painted this parodic picture for Dora
there was nostalgia for my dearest motherland.
I had butterflies in my stomach,
but not tropical ones.
I underestimated Dora’s sentimentality,
for she took my allegory too seriously.
When the first photo-reporter put his snotty nose
between us with a sticky intimate question,
Dora gracefully and frightfully
kicked him in the most sensitive place
with her pointed shoe,
sharp like a D’Artagnan sword,9
and forced him to pull from his Nikon
the negatives that had captured us embracing.
But he was only her first victim.
She smashed so many lenses
from other cameras
that our zig-zagging journey
could be traced by the shards of so many
Kodaks, Hasselblads, and Leicas10
broken by her into smithereens.
If Judgment Day does come I hope God
will count this defense of poetry in favor of Dora,
for she saved a potential victim from the
from the intrusive eye of the paparazzi.
Even when one policemen was invited
to stop this long legged hurricane
with lightning jumping from her blackcurrant eyes,
instead of putting her in handcuffs

9
D’ Artagnan is the main protagonist in The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas.
10 All of these were popular camera brands.
24
for destroying an entire photo industry
he invited her for a tango.
How beautiful they were whirling in tango!
He as a giant buffalo was bending
her waist as if she were liana
and the stars in the sky were flying over their heads
like serpentine on improvised fiesta.
Babies with naked bottoms were singing,
and palms were clinging like posts in a soccer game,
trembling from a strike by Pele and swaying
In tango.
In tango.
In tango.
The old palms of wrinkled jungle clairvoyants
could see everything on earth even without eyes,
seeing all of us from Lake Baikal to the Amazon River,
but even they missed in the pre-morning dark
the ghostly tanks closing in on dissident Prague.
But anyone who loves is also a kind of clairvoyant
capable of predicting for their beloved
dangers hidden in the shadows before they appear.
I was the one who was happily blind.
How did Dora find the magician’s wisdom
to predict with this maternal instinct
that something terrible was waiting for me?
Where else could you find such kind witches
as those here in the Amazonas,
who are able with sharp, charming shoes
to hit photographers in the most painful area
and then afterwards dance an immortal tango
with a policeman who should
otherwise put her behind bars?
25
After her dance with the policeman,
some happily unruly guys from the Peace Corps
flooded the village Leticia,
passing beside my Dora.
One of them was a nice but impossible braggart.
He introduced himself as Vonnegut
and I smiled asking him,
“Are you Kurt?”
He replied,
“No, that’s my father.”
I understood it as nonsense
because he looked at Dora
as if she since her birth date belonged to him.
I laughed:
“Stop boasting pal.
That is the same as me saying I am Gagarin,
and that my father’s name is Yuri.”
I concluded:
“Listen, leave my Dora in peace.”
He answered:
“Is she your property?”
Being very drunk, full of tequila,
we immediately grappled and began
wrestling to the tease of piranhas
looking at us from the water.
Of course I as a Socialist-idealist
was always for brotherhood,
but with all poets
to duel with a rival for a woman
is a sacred and necessary ritual.
We continued incited by our tequila
until Dora, outraged and laughing,
26
splashed us with stinky leftovers
from a friendly somebody’s bucket.
She hammered our heads with her fists,
then washed us with almost boiling water.
Now we became very peaceful,
like two exemplary members of the Peace Corps.
Each of our countries would have been proud of us.
My rival, digging into his pockets,
proudly took out his driver’s license
where was written to my surprise:
“Mark Vonnegut.”
He said, with a little bit of childish pride,
“We Vonneguts don’t lie.”
We clinked our glasses in celebration.
The Amazon River transformed itself
in that moment into the River Elbe—
that tiny German river where
in May of 1945 Russian and American soldiers
embraced each other, drinking whiskey and vodka,
not foreseeing ahead of them a new war—a cold one.
Oh great Dora Franco,
South American fairytale in flesh,
when we have quarrels and wars
we need such Joans of Arcs for peace
among everybody’s pointless scuffling,
not yet satiated with blood
and the climbing over dead bodies
to the peaks of power everywhere.
Let pass between them
27
like a living olive tree,
my Dora Franco,
who will piteously trample
into smithereens all stupid ambitions
with only her left, pointed shoe
sniffing for her lost right one.
Let her take all the dirty negatives
from the cameras of all shameless paparazzi.
28
VII
My priceless friend,
childishly shy rebel,
Gonzalo Arrango,
you snuffed all quarrels around you,
condoled all grievances around you,
but how could we condole you
in the same way you did us?
Condolence is a rare talent,
no less rare than being a poet.
What can I do to keep your life from fading,
to make your afterdeath a new life?
I am roaring to you Gonzalo
as a Siberian bear.
Keep going my little colibri,
make your graceful circles!
You were a great Nadaist,
everybody’s savior, but you didn’t save yourself,
even when you were writing your poetry
on the South American sky with a colibri quill.
Without Pablo and you
even pain is more painful.
Without Pasternak and you
even sadness is sadder.
There is no Bulat. There is no Andrey. Bella is dead—
my first wife, Tsarina of Russian verse.11
So who can be the Muse on our Earth,
when my hermano Arrango has cruelly left me,

11 Bulat Okudzjava was a famous poet, singer and composer. Andrey Voznesensky was also a famous poet of the
60’s generation. Bella Akhmadulina was one of the great poets following the tradition of Anna Akhmatova and
Marina Tsevaeva.
29
when on my table even blank paper pains
like an open wound where everybody’s pains embrace?
“Nothing serious” some observers will coolly comment,
hiding with their palms their yearnings.
There are so many “nothingists” in this world
that I involuntarily value a little “something.”
It is better to call yourself “nothingists”
than to be thinking nothing,
but the sky will see everything with the eye of God
and will not forgive nothing and nobody.
30
VIII
Dora,
Leticia brought us closer like a brother and sister
among the crocodile hunters,
who surprisingly loved their prey,
even in killing them to sell their skin
for shoes, purses, and portfolios,
Leticia—forgotten orphan of the twentieth century,
was a surprising place where I didn’t meet one evil being.
I found here some books,
and among them Doctor Zhivago.
Inside the library there was a charming hunchback librarian,
whose name was Virgilio Diaz (Vergil in English).
His face was childishly proud
as he showed me his treasures.
On his shelves were Señores Dante, Cervantes, and Twain,
and to my joy my own campañero Neruda,
for whose 60th anniversary an exhibition was made here
by his adoring fans among the crocodile hunters.
“I’m probably the first Russian in Leticia?”
I asked him.
“The Russians truly are rare birds over here,
but sometimes they fly to visit us, Don Eugenio.
Probably it will inspire you that not long ago
we had a special Russian guest—Smirnov.
He was a joyful pal,
who could with a skillful hand kill
many mosquitoes on his cheeks.”
“Which Smirnov?” I interrupted.
“Sergio.
Father’s name was more difficult—Serhevic.
We do not have any of his books,
31
but he left a few words—
like signs of his future intentions—
on a book of Pasternak’s.”
I was shocked when I opened Doctor Zhivago
and saw the autograph and to my surprise
his words were pompously kind. Something like—
“On behalf of the Soviet writers of Moscow,
I am very happy to see here our classic book,
Viva Leticia!”
My Virgilio, who didn’t know the details of our Soviet hell,
mumbling, asked me,
“Don Eugenio, I see you are very uneasy
reading this autograph. Why?”
“He saved many heroes of war from Stalin’s prisons,”
I answered him with shame and sadness,
“afterwards he was chairman of the meeting
where Pasternak was expelled from the Writer’s Union.”
Virgilio answered frustrated and confidently:
“As a bibliophile I now understand that such a book is priceless.”
32
IX
So Mother Russia on the shores of the Amazon River
had caught me with my zig-zagging trace,
and I once again felt myself inside her
like inside a Gulag zone,
behind barbed-wire where there are no exits for me.
And I didn’t want to escape.
My roots are here. Oh Russia,
everywhere on the globe is a place for our unexpected dates.
This is the zone of my sufferings.
This is the zone of my love.
But why does she torture me so much with so many whys?
Our past teaches us poorly—
we must learn from the future.
That Smirnov permitted himself to be a tool of evil,
not being a coward in the war,
he was deadly scared in peace,
and probably in leaving that dedication
he was sincere to his secret depths.
Why then did he stoop to criminal cruelty?
This is the same man who had saved, some years before,
our soldiers captured by the Germans
whom Stalin suspected as traitors.
Why, if he repented in the jungles of the Amazon
after betraying Pasternak,
did he again betray another poet (our dearest Bulat)?
Who invented such a tragedy of betrayal?
Even Shakespeare would be amateurish describing it.
There is something devilish in such temptation.
With our readiness to betray
33
our conscience will never be saved.
“Did you have frightening dreams?”
Dora jerked up sitting on the edge of the bed,
and stretching, she asked me:
“If you want I will sing you something.”
As she sang to me a folk song, “Dormidera,”
Dora reminded me of my mom.
Not accidentally in each generation
the woman who loves always has in her genes
this mysterious feeling of fostering,
and without that there is no love.
Dora’s song was born in Peru.
During my sleepless nights,
Dora would try unsuccessfully to console me
“Dormi, Dormi, Dormidera,
you are tender sleeping herb,
do not be cruel, our era,
do not leave us on the curb
If you dry up all eyelashes
you will help all see sweet dreams
safe as God from wars and clashes
free as birds from tears and screams.”
34
X
When I arrived with Dora to Leticia
there were a lot of frightening miracles.
Indian women with wrinkles on their copper faces,
screaming, tearing out their silver hairs,
were howling in motley huddles,
rolling epileptically in the little wooden airport.
A Niagara of tears was gushing from their eyes,
even dogs were weeping, asking for pity,
it was a talent show of people’s grief.
I asked them, “Why are you crying?”
An old Indian answered,
“Senor poeta, we are children but wise ones who know
that very soon you will leave.
That is why we are crying and screaming,
For this explanation I think you
owe me at least one peso.”
Our Virgilio invented a special gift
for the enjoyment of the local population—
a recital of my poetry in three languages—
Indian, Spanish, and Russian.
It was the only reading in my life where
an entire population of any one place was present.
Two almost naked paparazzi appeared;
however, they were better equipped
to click their chewing gum
rather than their shutters.
After Dora’s polite but frightening warning,
they were full of tact toward this iron lady.
Here was present the whole village,
35
from seniors to crawling babies.
Even their big chief was expected
a little later as according to the custom of his high rank.
Fresh mollusks were served in shells
and a giant crocodile, punished for his blood thirst,
was carried in as a hot appetizer.
For redemption of his guilt
he was put on a giant skewer over the camp fire.
Delicacies were offered for the special occasion:
fried piranhas which proved to be harmless
and a suspicious liquid carried in plastic gas cans,
which seemed to increase the inspirations of our hosts.
Finally the chief appeared
and with a graceful wave of his hand,
he tamed the children jumping over the flame.
I plopped down, preparing to read for all this
Indian village high society.
The first poem was “The Execution of Stepan Razin,”
about the Russian Robin Hood executed in Red Square.
I discovered that here
(unlike in the Russian Ministry of Education)
poetry was actually loved and admired.
The crowd applauded me with all their strength,
killing thousands of mosquitoes between their palms.
At the end of my reading
one crocodile hunter asked me,
“Sorry, could you read once again that piece
when they cut his head off with the ax?
It was so picturesque.”
Satisfying as many Indians as possible,
I with pleasure cut off once more the head of Stepan Razin.
Unexpectedly all Leticia began to sing a multi-verse capella—
36
voices of old men, women, babies,
and even unexpectedly inspired paparazzi.
Blistered palms began to bite
into the bellies of many drums.
I had never had success like this anywhere,
not even in Madison Square Garden.
Afterwards
, everyone was enjoying themselves,
laughing, falling down on the grass, and
sometimes cuddling in the shadows of trees.
Like a silly foreigner I asked,
“Why do you look so happy?”
The same old Indian commented,
“We are children but wise ones who know
that if you leave us tomorrow
,
then you will one day return.
That is why we are rejoicing and don’t suffer.
When you come back we again will hopelessly but collectively cry together.
Try Senor poeta everywhere in this world
to endlessly arrive and not leave even in leaving. For this explanation I think you
owe me at least one peso.
And for your beautiful girl I have one gift,
one hammock woven by me,
it will be swaying,
swaying,
swaying,
and she will be saying,
saying,
saying,
three magic words out of the blue
which in English sound like
37
‘I love you.’”
Dora, accompanied by a mooing vaca
exclaimed like a girl who got her childhood back—
“Oh, hamaca.”
Dora happily melted, kissing this gift
as she stretched its name “ham-mm-a-ca,”
like when I was a baby chewing something sweet,
stretching my first word “m-m-m-mmac-a.”12

Oh my multi-colored-skinny-humanity,
you are not like anything in the world
but only like yourself.
Surprisingly you didn’t lose
your kindness and dignity.
Do not permit any cripplers to cripple your soul.
Oh my Fathermotherland,
could you finally find your sisterbrotherhood?

12 Mmaka is a Russian word for “sweet.”
38
XI
In our common Motherfatherland,
under the stare of our common stars,
we were embracing while we walked
over the wooden, cracking bridge
to our tiny hotelino.
The bridge sadly teetered
as if he felt pity for us,
and Dora whispered:
“Eugenio. Don’t go away.”
“Why?”—I asked her.
“Don’t be afraid, you will return.
At home something dangerous is waiting for you.
I feel it with all of my belly.”
Suddenly something alien exploded within me,
a malicious suspicion:
“So this means that they gave
you a very sensitive mission
to recruit me with your love.
How long have you worked for them
being a mercenary, my beloved?”
Dora like a little baby at first didn’t understand me.
Before long, however, she was suffocated
by a invisible noose:
“That’s only because I am scared for you mi querido.”
Unexpectedly her tender whisper
changed into a thunderous scream,
even the palm trees were trembling,
“I’m scared because I love you, stupid.”
And she began to run to the Amazon River with
her rolled hamaca pressed against her chest,
She flung off her shoes to different sides.
39
She was running as if she were chasing her death.
She was running barefoot,
throwing to the side everything that was on her,
her blouse,
her skirt.
She was running like a wounded panther,
trying to escape from her own skin.
She was running freed forever from cameras,
hiding from their intrusive shutters.
She was running like a newborn,
teetering wildly away from her insulted hopes.
She was running in spite of herself,
wounding her priceless legs, the best in the world.
She was running where there were piranhas,
but even they were not nearly as cruel as love.
As she ran I was ripped to shreds
by shame and self-hatred,
my life condemned.
How did everything that I hated in my life
penetrate so deeply into my soul?
When I finally caught you Dora,
I heard a signal from the sky.
It was as if at the edge of disgrace
I caught my escaping conscience.
You stood there in lucidity,
with a deep, reverberating sigh
you interrupted your flight
to severely tell me,
“Get off your knees.
It doesn’t become you.”
40
XII
Presentiments of our beloveds are like predictions,
and life bitterly confirms all their fears.
I didn’t predict what August would bring me,
what kind of shame, what arrogance, what fear.
I did not foresee those senile old men
of our politburo hatching a vindictive hybrid
from within their heads.
At first they will invite all Czech leaders
and treat them as dearest guests,
before arresting them with a friendly shrug.
And afterwards tanks will cross borders
like armored brothers to an almost friendly roar—
and Socialsim, like the student Jan Palach,
will burn himself for the horror of the world.
Our ambassador Dobrynin
was so clumsily hiding his eyes
when he read his official note.
His trembling hands crumpled
the coded note while at the same time armored
packages of our so-called friendly mission
were moving on the streets of Prague.
Kissinger did not tear his hair out
and even very happily cackled,
ready for his vacation
after such a great deal.
And I at that time was not whining,
but even I almost killed myself.
What helped me during this time?
An unexpected dove from Santiago
41
and the image of Dora Franco—
with her beauty, boldness, and soul,
when my ideal “Socialism” collapsed
like a fallen symbol of prosperity and freedom,
transformed into a nest of killers and thieves.
The mother of my two young sons, Maria,
didn’t permit me to give up at that time.
In my soul she was rhymed with the name Russiya
and this was my most precise rhyme.
I will be happy for my spirit and my descendants,
if they will not be blind in the dark.
I hope, not weak and not falsely strong,
they will always proudly say- not cry:
“We are Yevtushenkos. We could not lie.”
All the divorces in my life
didn’t give me freedom from love.
I couldn’t learn how to unlove any of my beloveds
and that is why I am alive and am not an imposter.
42
XIII
After a feast and being on unsteady legs
I with Dora returned to our hotelina.
Dora triumphantly unwrapped that gift
from that old Indian and smiled:
“How could you compare the bed and hamaca?”
She hung the hammock on the terrace.
When she was defenselessly naked I lost myself.
At first I didn’t know what to do when she embraced me,
but I very quickly understood.
This is a great sign of real love—
the shyness of our hands and eyes
when each time is like the first and last.
She caressed the hammock,
like an old friend from her dreams:
“Eugenio, this is my childhood.
Come into my childhood with me.”
She put her poncho in the hammock,
the coals of her eyes were shining:
“You can rely on me and the hamaca.
From us you would never fall into hell.”
She was so teasingly swaying
in the crown of all constellations,
in a very risky God’s cradle
for everything which we call Beauty.
I remembered my journey to Guatemala,
where an unexpected garden flower grew in the cornfield.
In Spanish these flowers were known as los gladiolos,
and the peasants didn’t understand my urban stupidity
when I was annoyingly questioning them like a fool:
“Could you explain to me why these
gladioli grow in the maize field?”
43
Only one campesino continued
to talk to me and he asked:
“What kind of bird are you, señor?”
“You mean my profession?
Yo soy el poeta.”
“I’m sorry señor, but it is hard to believe
that you are el poeta because these
flowers exist simply for beauty.
El poeta should sense that.
Why don’t you understand?”
So Dora, in this way you
decorate with yourself our world
like a wild gladiolus in the cornfield.
You are part of the beauty
which will save the world
like it is said by one Russian,
unfortunately unknown to you,
señor Dostoevsky.
I met you Dora after 40 long
but invisible on your face years.
I hope we didn’t become old and boring.
We didn’t find indifference in the still-young
eyes of each other.
How smart and kind you were my Dora,
that even in your depths
you didn’t remind me of my old suspicion,
which the Cold War had poisoned me with.
And I swear not after over-sweetened fame,
not after being wounded in flight,
I will never fall on my knees
44
because I don’t want to become not me.
You will be my same Bagheera
and I will be the same Mowgli.
13
Adopted by you, goddess of Amazonas,
I will stay forever alive.
I will try to be like Márquez and Vonnegut,
who don’t know in whose name they are living,
but they are living in the name of somebody
who invisibly sees all of us.
“Dormi, dormi, dormidera.”
Who knocks in the night- a fear?
but if conscience lives and vera,
14
our world will not disappear.
13 Mowgli and Bagheera are characters from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. Bagheera is a black panther who
adopts and raises the child, Mowgli.
14 Russian word for “hope.”

Read “Dora Franco: A Delayed Confession”

By Yevgeny Yevtushenko

PAPER: What exactly is the speaker in the

poem confessing? What relationship does the

poem try and develop between its Cold War

context and the love affair with Dora Franco?

What message are we supposed to take from

the poem?