Not to set fire to myself
or be burned like Avvakum,
I do what I can
to chase away thought.
I now orbit the earth
in low-level flight,
life’s burdens and vanities
far out of sight.
by Варлам Тихонович Шаламов (Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov)
(1981)
translated by Robert Chandler
Fun Fact: Referenced in this poem is Avvakum Petrov (Аввакум Петров) a Russian protopope of the Kazan Cathedral on Red Square who led the opposition to Patriarch Nikon’s reforms of the Russian Orthodox Church. For his opposition to the reforms, Avvakum was repeatedly imprisoned. For the last fourteen years of his life, he was imprisoned in a pit or dugout (a sunken, log-framed hut) at Pustozyorsk above the Arctic Circle. He was finally executed by being burned at the stake. The spot where he was burned has been commemorated by an ornate wooden cross. His autobiography and letters to the tsar, Boyarynya Morozova, and other Old Believers are considered masterpieces of 17th-century Russian literature.
Rambling At The Bridge Head 