‘Moscow. 1924. You are a visiting specialist from the Ford Motor Company. While exploring the city, you meet the famous Soviet poet Sergei Yesenin.'

Artistic reconstruction of a possible day in the life of Sergei Yesenin.

Morning.

I wake up late—my head is heavy after last night. Outside the window, Moscow was damp and gray; janitors scraped ice from the sidewalks. I sat on the bed for a long time, smoking one cigarette after another. I kept thinking about the village—Konstantinovo, the smell of hay, the Oka River hidden in the morning fog. The farther I get from it, the more vividly it lives inside me.

Marienhof stopped by. We talked about poetry and how people nowadays seem to love noise more than words. I laughed, but inside there was sadness. Sometimes it feels as if everyone around me is only pretending to live, while I feel every little thing too deeply.

In the afternoon, we went to a tavern. Loud voices, smoke everywhere, someone asked me to read my poems. I read reluctantly at first, then with growing passion. When people truly listen, it almost makes me believe in myself again. One young woman was crying. I do not know whether because of the poems or because of her own sorrow.

Toward evening I wandered alone along Tverskaya Street. Horses breathing clouds into the cold air, blurred streetlights, dirty snow beneath my boots. Moscow is beautiful, yet alien - alien even to me. Here you must always be louder than everyone else just to avoid disappearing.

At night I wrote. The words came in sudden bursts, as though through pain. I wanted to write simply and honestly - about a man tired of taverns, fame, and his own restless soul, yet still deeply in love with this land, these birch trees, this snow.

Before sleep I left the lamp burning for a long time. There was anxiety in me. And yet, strangely, there was peace too - in the thought that the poems would remain, even after I am gone.