# 2025-09-07 - Perfection by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
       
 (IMG) Perseverance by Sana Arjumand
       
           The wind blows gently, fresh and cool.
           The porch is fragrant with damp pine.
           A duck stretches its wings wide,
           having just laid its egg.
           
           And it looks like a faultless girl,
           having laid in God's design,
           a perfection of white roundness
           on an altar of straw.
           
           And above the muddy, thawing road,
           above the moldering roofs of the huts,
           the perfection of the disc of fire
           rises slowly in the sky.
           
           The perfection of the woods in spring
           all shot through by the dawn,
           almost disembodied, shimmers in mist
           like the breath of the earth, all over the earth.
           
           Not in the frantic shapes of new fashions,
           not in shapes borrowed from others--
           perfection is simply being natural,
           perfection is the breath of the earth.
           
           Don't torment yourself that art is secondary,
           destined only to reflect,
           that it remains so limited and lean,
           compared with nature itself.
           
           Without acting a part
           look to yourself for the source of art,
           and quietly and uniquely
           reproduce yourself just as you are.
           
           Be reflected, as a creature of nature
           bending over a well
           draws the reflection of its face
           up from the ice-ringed depths.
       
       author: Yevtushenko, Yevgeny, 1933-2017
 (TXT) detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Yevgeny_Yevtushenko
       
       tags: poem
       
       # Tags
       
 (DIR) poem