грустный

My dear, can't you see?  
You've lived a true Russian life,  
A life etched in pain and heartache,  
Where sorrow is the constant refrain.  
Your love story, tragic and raw,  
Would make Tolstoy put down his pen—  
For no words could capture
The depths of your justified bitterness.  
It’s a grief that makes the world weep,  
A bitterness so pure, so deep.
 
Mei would stumble, lost for words,  
Unable to write a book about you,  
For how could any story  
Do justice to such a life—  
A life torn between dreams and loss?  
 
A painter, in despair, Would set  
down his brush,  
Unable to capture your essence—  
Ryabushkin’s strokes would falter,  
For no portrait could reveal  
The sorrow behind your eyes.
 
You are Mark Bernes’ saddest song,  
A melody that echoes in the night,  
The silent cry of a broken soul,  
A song that lingers in the shadows,  
A song no one dares to sing aloud.  
You are the very spirit of  
Dystovsky’s night, A character in  
White Nights, Haunted by loneliness,  
Yet still, you breathe, Still, you endure.
 
How does the heart keep beating,  
When it's constantly bleeding?  
First-generation in America,  
you've never seen Your family’s homeland,  
Mother Russia, Yet you carry her  
weight in your soul,  
Her sorrow wrapped in your bones.  
 
My dejected man, You are Yevtushenko’s  
most sorrowful verse, A poem broken  
by love and longing, Still, you have  
lived a true Russian life—  
A life full of pain, yet unbroken,  
A life full of loss, yet somehow, whole.
 
NP