This is the text of one of the most perfect poems, and performances, on the Babii Yar recording. Bates makes Yevtushenko's lovely poem his own, giving it a sensitive reading which creates a miniature world as layered and complex as a Chekhov play. He reads the last part of the poem, from the reprise of "The window looks out upon white trees ..." in nearly a whisper. It is as if our thoughts are speaking to us.

The Window Looks Into White Trees

The window looks out upon white trees.
The Professor looks a long time at the trees.
For a very long time he looks at the trees.
For a very long time his fingers crumble the chalk.
It's all so simple--these rules of division!
But he's forgotten them--
these rules of division!
Forgotten, just imagine, these rules of division!

An error!
Yes!
An error on the blackboard!
Today we all sit in a different way,
And we listen and we look in a different way,
and we can only look in a different way,
and for this we need no prompting.

The Professor's wife has gone and left her home.
We don't know where she's gone on leaving home;
we don't know
why she's gone away from home,
but we only know that she has gone.

In a suit old-fashioned and not new,
as always old-fashioned and not new,
yes, as always old-fashioned and not new,
the Professor goes downstairs to the check-room.
Long he fumbles in his pockets for the check.
"Now what is this?
Where is this check?
But, perhaps,
I didn't get the check?
Where has it gone?"
He rubs his forehead.
"Ah, there it is! ...
Well,
as you see, I'm getting old.
Don't argue, Auntie Masha, I'm getting old.
And what's to be done--
I'm getting old ..."
We hear
the front door creak behind him.

The window looks out upon white trees,
upon big and beautiful white trees,
but at this moment we're not looking at the trees,
we're looking in silence at the Professor.
Off he goes,
stooping
and inept,
somehow all defenseless and inept,
I would say exhaustedly inept,
beneath the snow that's softly falling into silence.
Already, like the trees, he is all white,
yes,
like the trees,
completely white,
a little longer--
and he'll be so very white,
he'll be indistinguishable from the trees.

--Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 1956

I found this recording listed in the database of a library consortium which includes five colleges and twenty public libraries near Boston. When in due course it arrived, I found that the record, scratched and dusty, had last been borrowed in 1982; I began to plan this web site that day. - KR