— Aleksandr Pushkin
(Variant translation):
One more story, just one more,
And then my history's completed,
All my chronicles written down
And my sinner's debt repaid to God.
Not for nothing.
The Lord appointed me to bear witness
For many many years and it was he
Taught me the art of creating books.
One day, in the far future,
some hard-working monk
Will find my painstaking,
anonymous writings.
He'll light his lamp,
as I light mine,
He'lll shake the dust of centuries from these scrolls.
Then he'll copy out, carefully, these true accounts,
So the descendants of today's Christians
May know the past of their native land
Remember their mighty Tsars warmly
For their glory and their knidness
And our Lord's mercy on their sins and crimes.
In my old age I live my life anew.
Pushkin, Alexander (2012). Pushkin's Boris Gudunov. Oberon Books.