We should be stingier <br />breathing out and breathing in- <br />then, perhaps, the epic <br />will lie down in neat quatrains. <br /> <br />We have to be more generous, <br />louder, like the outcry 'Follow me! ' <br />stronger, coarser- <br />with the earth's coarse globe. <br /> <br />I envy the relics of space, <br />compressed by the word in layers, <br />but brevity is the sister of ineptitude <br />when it springs from emptiness. <br /> <br />Not all conciseness is priceless. <br />Rhymed oil cakes are stiff and brittle, <br />and someone's square hay, <br />I wouldn't eat if I were a horse. <br /> <br />I like hay by the armful, <br />with the dew still not dried out, <br />with red whortleberries, with mushroom caps, <br />clipped by a scythe. <br /> <br />All sentimentality with form is sloppy, <br />hurl the epoch into rhythm, <br />tear it up the way an invalid in despair <br />tears up his striped sailor's shirt! <br /> <br />Should we place in a woman's cap and dress <br />along with other old-fashioned rags, <br />the divine tatters <br />that we call life? <br /> <br />Handicraft taste is not art. <br />A great reader will grasp <br />both the charm of the absence of style <br />and the splendor of longeurs. <br /> <br /> <br />1986 <br />Translated by Albert C. Todd<br /><br />Yevgeny Yevtushenko<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/we-should-be-stingier/
