Inside me the season is autumn,
the chill is in me, you can see through me,
and I am sad, but not altogether cheerless,
and filled with humility and goodness.
But if I rage sometimes
then I am the one whose rage is shedding my leaves,
and the simple thought comes sadly to me
that raging isn’t really what is needed.
The main need is that I should be able
to see myself and the struggling, shocked world
in autumnal nakedness,
when even you, and the world, can be seen right through.
From “Bratsk Station, and Other New Poems’’ by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
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