When the old aristocracy was first overthrown, I had predicted its consequences to be no where near what it truly came to be. Slowly, I saw my beloved city, St Petersberg, and its cultural and artistic value being destroyed. As with many others, I endured the corrupt regime binding my hands, body and mind so that I could not breathe and I bled on the inside. A voice came to me. It called out comfortingly, it said, "Come here, leave your deaf and sinful land, leave Russia forever. Freedom was what I thirsted but I stood my ground because my sturbborn heart could not betray the motherland while others left, fleetingly. Thus, I transposed my unbendable will on to a piece of paper, I am not one of those who left the land. I pondered a lot in those dark days, as opening my mouth to express my thoughts was considered dangerous. I thought about whether this dark period will ever end and whether if the days of Russia's propserity and enrichment will ever return. Has this century been worse. Than the ages that went before? Perhaps in this, that in a daze of grief and anguish it touched, but could not cure, the vilest sore. But I knew all I could do was hope and stay strong in mind and spirit. So much had I lost and had stolen from me but I still possessed the power to form a shared connection with others whom I did not know through the tip of a pen.
Give me bitter years of sickness,
Suffocation, insomnia, fever,
Take my child and my lover,
And my mysterious gift of song--
This I pray at your liturgy
After so many tormented days,
So that the stormcloud over darkened Russia
Might become a cloud of glorious rays