Lithuania! My Homeland! You are like good health: / Only he learns how precious you are / Who has lost you. Today I am able to see — and describe in writing — / Your full beauty, precisely because I miss you.

The centuries pass; war rumbles; / Revolution arises, villages burn…

In a desert land, of stunted, scanty growth, / On soil cracked by sweltering heat, / The Poison Tree — like some menacing sentinel — / Stands — alone in all the universe.

Here’s a taste of Polish poetry: Adam Mickiewicz’s Crimean Sonnets, some of my personal favorites…

We drink the chalice of existence / With blindfolded eyes, / Moistening its golden rim / With our tears.

And many, many years later, / Your voice again began to trouble me. / All night I read Your testament, / And came to life again, like one stirred from a stupor.

Today the church is empty; / The deserted school is locked, / The empty field unharvested…

Not long will be the trace I leave / In the feeble memory of man. / But that is a mere phantom of existence, / Obscure, false, and empty — / What need have I of it?

Sin is to live without daring or dreaming, / Neither esteemed nor persecuted. / Sin is to know neither horror nor hope / And to be accepted, but not loved.

Blok’s 1908 poem revisits a decisive battle in Russian history, in an apocalyptic tone; he and many in his generation felt that Russia again stood at a fateful turning point in history.

How can a heart expression find? / How should another know your mind? / Will he discern what quickens you? / A thought once uttered is untrue…

A man from his own doorstep stares, / And recognizes nothing. /  She’d gone — or fled — and everywhere — / The traces of destruction.

To love some is a heavy cross, / But your beauty’s like a road unwinding, / And the secret of your charm / Is commensurate with life’s enigma…

Mary Magdalene beat her breast and wept, / The beloved disciple stood petrified; / But toward the spot where silently His Mother stood, / No one dared to even look.

Listen up!I mean, if they’re lighting the stars, / Does that mean that someone still needs them? / That someone wants them to be there? / That someone calls these spit-wads pearls?

I stepped out onto the square; / The burned-out city block / I donned on my head like a wig of red hair. / People are terrified — from out of my mouth / An incompletely chewed shout wiggles its legs.

Could you, from that celestial hall, / Thy winglet of some down divest? / And let it like a snowflake fall, / And fizzle on my burning breast?”

All thought of valor, of great feats, of glory / I would upon this woeful earth resign, / When from the table standing there before me, / Your face, within its simple frame, would shine.

Christ my God! I thirst for a miracle — / Now, this minute, at the day’s beginning! / O, let me die, while / All of life is like a book for me.

Beat the rumbling of revolts upon the square! / Higher, row of proud heads! / We, with the outpouring of a second deluge, / Will wash clean the cities of the worlds.