Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O, no, it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

 

by William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)

‘Say A Few More Words To Me’ by Georgy Ivanov

Say a few more words to me,

don’t sleep before the dawn.

I need you to feel close to me.

My journey’s almost done.

 

May the last poem I have made

take on new life through your sweet lisp,

your quiet wrestle with sounds

you cannot get your tongue round.

 

by Георгий Владимирович Иванов (Georgii Vladimirovich Ivanov)

(1958)

translated by Robert Chandler

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Fun fact: Ivanov’s wife Odoevtseva, who this poem addresses, had a mild speech defect so couldn’t roll her ‘r’s. Ivanov died on 26 August 1958 hence the poems tone and themes.

Irina Vladimirovna Odoyevtseva (Ирина Владимировна Одоевцева) real name Iraida Heinike was a Russian poet, novelist and memoirist, and the wife of the poet Georgy Ivanov in her own right.