If you know boldness, you know mercy too, because they are like sisters;
boldness is lighter than all things on earth, but compassion is lighter than anything.

It’s not my custom to review poetry on this blog; I write it poorly and read it with only middling comprehension. But the description I received of Olga Sedakova’s recently released volume, Old Songs, intrigued me enough to accept the offer of a free review copy. As might be expected, the poems baffled me a little, but they nevertheless left an impression. The translation is done by Martha M. F. Kelly, and seems excellent so far as I am able to judge.

Olga Sedakova is a Christian Russian poet, a survivor of the Underground in Soviet times and today a major critic of her country’s war in Ukraine. Old Songs was published only a few weeks ago, and still awaits its first Amazon review.

Speaking from my limited perspective, these poems seemed resolutely Christian in a realistic way. No easy answers. No assumption that rewards will come to us in this world. The poet knows suffering and placidly expects to suffer more. All temporal hopes are likely to fail; we believe anyway.

I felt like a child trying to follow an adult conversation through most of the poems (it’s not a long book), but certain passages definitely resonated. I particularly liked the one I placed at the head of this review. Here’s a couple other good ones;

Ah, I’ve watched people a long, long time, and strange things have I learned: I know that the soul is an infant, an infant until its final hour, 
that it believes absolutely everything, and it sleeps in a den of thieves.

The dead don’t need a thing,
not houses nor dresses nor hearing.
There’s nothing they need from us.
Not a thing, save everything on earth.

Those are good lines. Recommended. I was impressed.