“Night Was Done” by Mikhail Kuzmin appears in Modern Russian Poetry: An Anthology (Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1921), chosen and translated by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinksky. In his essay, “Death and Resurrection of Mikhail Kuzmin,” author and scholar Simon Karlinsky quoted Russian-Soviet poet Anna Akhmatova and noted: “Male homosexual love, it is true, has always been a major (but by no means the only) theme in [Mikhail] Kuzmin’s poetry. Before he made his name as a poet, he acquired considerable notoriety for his autobiographical roman à thèse, Wings (Kryl’ia). Initially published in 1906 in a special issue of Vesy, one of the most prestigious literary journals of the day, and later as a separate volume that became a bestseller, Wings sought to demonstrate that for people who are homosexually inclined it is better to accept their orientation, making it a part of a productive and satisfying life, than to reject and fight it. This presupposition also underlies much of Kuzmin’s poetry.”