Talking about God is very intimate. This is a conversation about "the Father who is in secret." In addition, God hears us every second. In such conversations, it is more appropriate to ask the right questions than to stun with the enormity of answers.

Not every conversation about God is truly religious. There is just sheer vulgarity and violation of the third commandment. And, on the contrary, there are clever speeches that do not name names, but bring us close to God.

Here is a young man, according to his confession, "secretly envious of everyone and secretly in love with everyone", drops a few brilliant lines:

For the joy of quietly breathing and living Whom, tell me, should I thank?

My breath, my warmth has already fallen on the glass of eternity...

These simple lines are whispered in such a way that we can almost see with our own eyes the fogged "glass of eternity" and can write on it with our finger. Not commemorating the Creator in any way, this is perhaps one of the best religious poems.

Who found rest in one of the mass graves of the camp, what did he write during his lifetime about death? After all, a poet cannot but write about death. Here, for example, in "The Abbot":

I bowed, he replied with a courteous nod of his head,

And, speaking to me, he remarked:

"You will die a Catholic!"

The abbot was mistaken. Mandelstam did not accept Catholicism. As, however, there was no funeral service in St. Isaac's, although he said loftily:

I love under the arches of gray silence Prayers, memorial services, wandering And the touching rite — to which everyone owes —

Isaac has a funeral service.

Well, a poet is not necessarily a prophet. Did Brodsky know when he wrote: "I do not want to choose either a country or a churchyard, I will come to Vasilievsky Island to die," did he know, I repeat, that another churchyard and another island was assigned to his body?