Academy
The Southern
California Anthology, Vol.
XXI, 2006
USC
The American Academy of Arts
and Sciences counts among its manifold members Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who writes
a poem on a recent disaster at home, “School in Beslan”. He sees himself as
“a drop-out of all the world’s schools”, he goes to Beslan
for a lesson. “Beslan,
I know I am a bad father...”
Everything
was jumbled up in Beslan:
horror,
disorder, confusion...
Between
charred school desks and clouds of smoke,
Mohammed
and Christ wander like brothers
picking
up the children by little pieces.
That is Yevtushenko’s
conclusion, it seems simple, but he has arrived at it through an extraordinary
realization.
In
Russia, I was called a dynamite poet.
Now,
compared to dynamite, I am a mosquito.
None
of us could be justified
if
something like this is possible.
After all, it’s the
death of little children he’s talking about. “But mourning crescent moon
embraced a mourning cross.” A simple image, worthy of its subject.