"I am past thirty. I fear the nights.
I hunch the sheet with my knees.
I bury my face in the pillow, shamefully weeping,
that I have squandered my life on little nothings
and in the morning will squander it again.
If only you had known, my critics,
whose goodness is so innocently under question,
how tender thundering condemnations seem
compared with my own scolding,
you would be relieved, if late at night
you found your conscience tormenting you unjustly.
When leafing through all my verse
I find this: by squandering myself so rashly
I have soiled the pages with so much rot...
but I could not burn it; it is scattered over the world."
-- from “I Journeyed through Russia” by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
