Sergei Yesenin

Sing on a Cursed Guitar

Sing on a Cursed Guitar - context Summary

Late-life Reckoning in Verse

Composed in 1925, as Sergei Yesenin faced a troubled late life marked by passionate relationships, disillusionment, and alcoholism, the poem voices a blunt, retrospective mood. The speaker addresses a cursed guitar as a companion and confidant, describing how love and flirtation brought both intensity and ruin. He urges the deception of wealth and elegance to be foregone, acknowledging that deep love felt like a disaster. The speaker alternates between longing for a restored dawn and a stubborn insistence on singing about himself, defiantly claiming life and vitality amid decline.

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Sing, sing on a cursed guitar, your fingers dance and bend. You would choke in smoke and tar, my only one and the last friend. Don’t let your eyes be glued to gold nor the silk that shines immensely. In that woman happiness I sought and found my ruin accidentally. I wasn’t aware that a deep love is a disaster, plague, an arrow! It approached with a closed eye and blew the mind of a fellow. Sing, my friend, let the time reverse bringing back our old dawn’s shine, let other men be fed with caress of surviving trash, a beautiful swine. Please, stop, I won’t touch her! Please, stop, I’m not cursing! Let me sing about myself, mon cher on the fat string that is sparkling. The cube of my days shows clearly, there is still ancient gold in soul. Many maidens I kissed passionately many women I squeezed and cajoled. There is a vivid truth on earth I saw it even with a child’s eye, everyone licks a bitch on heat all dogs lining and ready to fly. Should I be jealous of her? As a such, face shame and all? Our life is a bed and cover! Our life is a kiss and fall! Sing, sing, let hands wave farewell - a fatal blow will cause fatal end! Listen, let them all go to hell, I will never, never die, my friend!

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