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Correction Lyrics
Chekhov on Sakhalin
by
Seamus Heaney
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Lyrics
So, he would pay his 'debt to medicine'. But first he drank cognac by the ocean with his back to all he travelled north to face. His head was swimming free as the troikas Of Tyumin, he looked down from the rail Of his thirty years and saw a mile Into himself as if he were clear water: Lake Baikhal from the deckrail of the steamer. That far north, Siberia was south. Should it have been an ulcer in the mouth, The cognac that the Moscow literati Packed off with him to a penal colony - Him, born, you may say, under the counter? At lеast that meant he knew its worth. No cantor In full throat by thе iconostasis Got holier joy than he got from that glass That shone and warmed like diamonds, warming On some pert young cleavage in a salon, Inviolable and affronting. He felt the glass go cold in the midnight sun. When he staggered up and smashed it on the stones It rang as clearly as the convicts' chains That haunted him. In the months to come It rang on like the burden of his freedom To try for the right tone - not tract, nor thesis - And walk away from floggings. He who thought to squeeze His slave's blood out and waken the free man Shadowed a convict guide through Sakhalin
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