All That Is Dear to My Heart: The Collected Poems of Alexandra Doren, Translated from the Russian by Lucas Stratton

By Alexandra Doren

The collected poems of Alexandra Doren, translated from the Russian by Lucas Stratton.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483646206

Alexandra Doren

In 1941, the young Alexandra was forcefully taken by the German Nazis from her homeland, the Ukraine, and was transported along with hundreds of other Ukrainians, by cattle train to Germany, where she worked in labor camps as a prisoner of war until the liberation in 1945 by the English and American armies. During her captivity, Alexandra often wrote poetry late in the evening about her distant homeland and about the hope for a dignified life. It was both difficult and dangerous to write poems under the watchful eye of her captors, and that is why most of her verse was lost during forced displacements from city to city and from country to country. Only by a miracle did one such poem survive. Written in 1943, the poem can be found in this collection under the title “We will not give in”.

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Copyright © 2013 by Alexandra Doren.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 06/19/2013

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Contents

A prayer

How wondrous is our world

My journey to America

San Francisco

Russian Nature

A Mother’s Tale

Old, holy Russia

I want to extol beauty

Song of my mother

We will not give in!

The Oak Tree

Little Leaf

River of my Youth (a song)

By the sea

In the forest

The Ocean

Memory

The Plum Tree

Flowers by the road

My land

Fall

Silence hangs over the sea

The Cornfield

The Statue

The Dream

Remembering my childhood

Remembering everything that I loved

Thought

No, I cannot sleep peacefully

First love

The nightingale

I dreamed of resting

A flower on the grave

Memories of a faithful friend

I will be home come Spring

I was born in a hard-working family

Schoolteacher

Maternal love

To a friend

Soul of the Poet

I have become forever bound to music

What a bewitching force

When I think about eternity

A holiday stroll

Where the poet sets her gaze

Russian winter

The last page of the calendar

A candlelit holiday

Thinking about Pushkin

To a friend

The poet

Our friend John Rock

Desire

Hands

Wildflowers (a song)

Revelation

My voice

Joy

Don’t delay!

Not just anyone can

Time flies

Birthday

Dialog

Don’t scold me, mother

Often by the sea

Soul of the poet

Biography of Lucas Stratton

The Life Journey of a teacher, poet, and singer

A prayer

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In the darkness of night, before the holy icon,

Before His blessed face a prayer I make,

And with it I bring a plea unto God—

All that has gathered in my soul, I speak:

"I have sinned, like all on this earth.

Almighty, forgive my arrogant pride

And forgive that in those harsh days,

in troubled times, that I

Fled my native land.

Forgive me, God, that I have not been able

To bring my good works to pass,

That in a difficult fate I often shied away,

But still did I my honor retain.

And faith in You helped me my whole life through.

I clung to that faith as to a banner.

Our Almighty Lord, beginning of all being—

May Your name stay sacred for all time."

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How wondrous is our world

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How wondrous is our world, and how spacious it is—

In all I spy God’s creation:

In each blade of grass amidst the wide-open field,

In lightning’s flash, in each human’s humbling.

In Fall, when in the sky I see

A flock of cranes in south-bound flight,

My soul stands still in awe and tender delight.

In prayer I marvel at Your might.

Life is more interesting in service of art.

I do know that beauty has saved us—

And so in song and verse shall I strive

Always, and in all, your Image to glorify.

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My journey to America

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In the calm of night a farewell horn sounds,

Ever further drift the contours of land,

And beyond an uncertain distance more

Ahead lies that anxiously awaited new shore.

Together traversing a stormy sea,

Three thousand people from many countries

Brought together by a common destiny,

And on this ship they are one family.

Here with them I am myself.

I hope in America to find

Freedom, to build a life anew,

To leave the horrors of war behind.

And now we see the Statue of Liberty,

A cry of rapture rips through each chest.

Yes, we’ve broken through every barrier.

We knew that ahead lies happiness.

Half a century has rushed by so fast.