My Selection — Colours
By Yegveny Yevtushenko
I memorized this poem as soon as I read it. I captures for me the vitality that a new love brings to one’s life even as it speaks to one’s vulnerability and the possibility of loss and decline. While colours do “vanish” over time, for me, their diminishment remains and comes to life with each new face — whether it be the literal face of a person or, more metaphorically, the “face” of an idea or work of art. The poem also reminds me to seek out new faces and not to let my fear overtake the coloured light.
Colours, by Yegveny Yevtushenko
When your face
appeared over my crumpled life
at first I understood
only the poverty of what I have.
Then its particular light
on woods, on rivers, on the sea,
became my beginning in the coloured world
in which I had not yet had my beginning.
I am so frightened, I am so frightened,
of the unexpected sunrise finishing,
of revelations
and tears and the excitement finishing.
I don’t fight it, my love is this fear,
I nourish it who can nourish nothing,
love’s slipshod watchman.
Fear hems me in.
I am conscious that these minutes are short
and that the colours in my eyes will vanish
when your face sets.
From Selected Poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, published by The Penguin Group, Inc. © 1962.
