I Would Like Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOCPEOQ CRASTUVCWXYYCZA2WB2C 2D2MVFE2F2GG2ELH2GI2 J2K2CL2M2N2O2O2O2O2T CP2J2Q2LR2S2T2J2U2V2 W2O2X2CEY2Z2A3OB3J2C 3D3CCE3F3G3H3I3J3I3X K3I3I3I3XJ2I3J2I3ON2 XFFL3M3A2N3S2J2I3J2J 2J2O3CJ2P3XQ3I3R3S3J 2T3U3S3V3JJ2ECJ2JCG2 W3I3X3CY3CZ3CI3D3OJE I3I3JN3A4EN3EI3J3J J2I would like | A |
to be born | B |
in every country | C |
have a passport | D |
for them all | E |
to throw | F |
all foreign offices | G |
into panic | H |
be every fish | I |
in every ocean | J |
and every dog | K |
in the streets of the world | L |
I don't want to bow down | M |
before any idols | N |
or play at being | O |
a Russian Orthodox church hippie | C |
but I would like to plunge | P |
deep into Lake Baikal | E |
and surface snorting | O |
somewhere | Q |
why not in the Mississippi | C |
In my damned beloved universe | R |
I would like | A |
to be a lonely weed | S |
but not a delicate Narcissus | T |
kissing his own mug | U |
in the mirror | V |
I would like to be | C |
any of God's creatures | W |
right down to the last mangy hyena | X |
but never a tyrant | Y |
or even the cat of a tyrant | Y |
I would like to be | C |
reincarnated as a man | Z |
in any image | A2 |
a victim of prison tortures | W |
a homeless child in the slums of Hong Kong | B2 |
a living skeleton in Bangladesh | C2 |
a holy beggar in Tibet | D2 |
a black in Cape Town | M |
but never | V |
in the image of Rambo | F |
The only people whom I hate | E2 |
are the hypocrites | F2 |
pickled hyenas | G |
in heavy syrup | G2 |
I would like to lie | E |
under the knives of all the surgeons in the world | L |
be hunchbacked blind | H2 |
suffer all kinds of diseases | G |
wounds and scars | I2 |
be a victim of war | J2 |
or a sweeper of cigarette butts | K2 |
just so a filthy microbe of superiority | C |
doesn't creep inside | L2 |
I would not like to be in the elite | M2 |
nor of course | N2 |
in the cowardly herd | O2 |
nor be a guard dog of that herd | O2 |
nor a shepherd | O2 |
sheltered by that herd | O2 |
And I would like happiness | T |
but not at the expense of the unhappy | C |
and I would like freedom | P2 |
but not at the expense of the unfree | J2 |
I would like to love | Q2 |
all the women in the world | L |
and I would like to be a woman too | R2 |
just once | S2 |
Men have been diminished | T2 |
by Mother Nature | J2 |
Why couldn't we give motherhood | U2 |
to men | V2 |
If an innocent child | W2 |
stirred | O2 |
below his heart | X2 |
man would probably | C |
not be so cruel | E |
I would like to be man's daily bread | Y2 |
say | Z2 |
a cup of rice | A3 |
for a Vietnamese woman in mourning | O |
cheap wine | B3 |
in a Neapolitan workers' trattoria | J2 |
or a tiny tube of cheese | C3 |
in orbit round the moon | D3 |
Let them eat me | C |
let them drink me | C |
only let my death | E3 |
be of some use | F3 |
I would like to belong to all times | G3 |
shock all history so much | H3 |
that it would be amazed | I3 |
what a smart aleck I was | J3 |
I would like to bring Nefertiti | I3 |
to Pushkin in a troika | X |
I would like to increase | K3 |
the space of a moment | I3 |
a hundredfold | I3 |
so that in the same moment | I3 |
I could drink vodka with fishermen in Siberia | X |
and sit together with Homer | J2 |
Dante | I3 |
Shakespeare | J2 |
and Tolstoy | I3 |
drinking anything | O |
except of course | N2 |
Coca Cola | X |
dance to the tom toms in the Congo | F |
strike at Renault | F |
chase a ball with Brazilian boys | L3 |
at Copacabana Beach | M3 |
I would like to know every language | A2 |
like the secret waters under the earth | N3 |
and do all kinds of work at once | S2 |
I would make sure | J2 |
that one Yevtushenko was merely a poet | I3 |
the second an underground fighter | J2 |
somewhere | J2 |
I couldn't say where | J2 |
for security reasons | O3 |
the third a student at Berkeley | C |
the fourth a jolly Georgian drinker | J2 |
and the fifth | P3 |
maybe a teacher of Eskimo children in Alaska | X |
the sixth | Q3 |
a young president | I3 |
somewhere say modestly speaking in Sierra Leone | R3 |
the seventh | S3 |
would still be shaking a rattle in his stroller | J2 |
and the tenth | T3 |
the hundredth | U3 |
the millionth | S3 |
For me it's not enough to be myself | V3 |
let me be everyone | J |
Every creature | J2 |
usually has a double | E |
but God was stingy | C |
with the carbon paper | J2 |
and in his Paradise Publishing Corporation | J |
made a unique copy of me | C |
But I shall muddle up | G2 |
all God's cards | W3 |
I shall confound God | I3 |
I shall be in a thousand copies to the end of my days | X3 |
so that the earth buzzes with me | C |
and computers go berserk | Y3 |
in the world census of me | C |
I would like to fight on all your barricades | Z3 |
humanity | C |
dying each night | I3 |
like an exhausted moon | D3 |
and resurrecting each morning | O |
like a newborn sun | J |
with an immortal soft spot fontanel | E |
on my head | I3 |
And when I die | I3 |
a smart aleck Siberian Francois Villon | J |
do not lay me in the earth | N3 |
of France | A4 |
or Italy | E |
but in our Russian Siberian earth | N3 |
on a still green hill | E |
where I first felt | I3 |
that I was | J3 |
everyone | J |
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Translated by the author | J2 |
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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