Soviets on Love

The Russian text of the poem

After my last post, which was lengthy and verging on polemic, I wanted to share a Soviet poem with you. I use this poem to improve my Russian phonetics, but I also find it comical for all that it is not.

You must know to cherish love, and
With time, you’ll cherish it twice over.
Love is not sighing on benches,
Nor it is strolls beneath the moon.
Everything will come: sleet and fresh snow.
Only together must you live out your lives.
Love is like a good song,
And songs are hard to write.

– Stepan Petrovich Shipachëv, 1899-1980

The author of these unsentimental lines is now primarily notorious (insofar as he enjoys any lasting fame at all) for opposing and denouncing the famous Soviet dissidents Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov in the 1970s. Definitely on the wrong side of history, but he did not live to understand his mistake.