The Entrepreneurs calling, made beautiful in poetry

Early illusions are beautiful

Early illusions wound dangerously…

but what does it matter! we are above vanity,

concerned with the highest kind of knowing,

saved by our happy blindness.

We, who are not afraid of taking a false step-

fools, from realities point of view-

still bear enchantment in our faces

through all the disillusioned crowd.

****

We are driven into the distance

by a glimmering of something,

away from the daily grind, the calculations

of everyday living,

from pale skeptics and pink schemers,

transforming the world with our reflections.

But the inevitability of disappointments

makes us see too clearly. On all sides

everything suddenly takes shape,

all unknown to us till now.

the world appears before us, undawned, unmisted,

no longer made radiant by something,

but it seems that all this truthfulness unmasked

is deceit, and what is gone was no deception

you see it is not the ability to be wise as the serpent,

it is not the doubtful honor of experience,

but the ability to be enchanted by the world

that reveals to us the world as it really is.

suddenly someone with an enchanted face

flashes past, pursuing some distant gleam,

and it doesn’t seem to us that he is blind

we seem ourselves to be the blind ones

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 1963, USSR