“The easy life has driven us insane...”
The easy life has driven us insane;
Wine in the morning, and hungover nights.
So how do we hold on to such a futile joy,
And keep this rosy cheek of yours,
Oh, drunken plight?
The endless handshakes hide an agonizing ritual,
While out there in the streets
So many nightly kisses wait for us,
At moments
When the streaming speech gains weight
And streetlamps blaze like torches.
We wait for death, which seems a fabled wolf,
And yet I fear that the very first to go,
Would be the one
With mouth as scarlet as alarm
And bangs that hide his eyes.
- 1913
Old Crimea
Cold spring. The Hungry Old Crimea,
The same as under Wrangel, - just as full of guilt.
The sheepdogs in the yard, and all the rags are patched,
And then the wispy grey and biting smoke, the same as ever.
The distances dispersed are just as great,
The trees all linger like newcomers, a little swollen with the buds;
And invites some pity
The almond stolen by the folly of the past.
The nature wouldn't recognize its very face,
And fearful are the shades: ones of Ukraine, Kuban...
Just like the hungry peasants, in felt shoes,
Who guard the gate, yet leave the ring untouched.
“Oh, feel this air, so drunk with troubles...”
Oh, feel this air, so drunk with troubles,
Upon the pitch black Kremlin square,
Inciters shake a "peace" so fragile,
Full of alarm the poplars' scents.
The waxen faces of cathedrals,
A forest of church bells so dense,
As if a tongue-less roadside robber
Within stone rafters disappeared.
Meanwhile inside the sealed cathedrals,
Where live both biting cold and darkness,
As if in tender amphorae of clay,
Plays Russian wine.
Uspenskiy*, built so wondrously convex
Is all surprise of heaven's curves,
And then the green Blagoveshenskiy*,
Appears ripe to coo like birds.
Archangel's* and the Resurrection's*
Both streaming light just like a palm, -
While in their chambers, and in secret,
A hidden flames in pitchers burns.
- 1916
*Names of well-known cathedrals.
Europe
Alike a sea-star or a Mediterranean crab
The final continent has washed ashore.
And being used to Asia, far and wide, or to America, let's say,
The ocean weakens as it washes Europe's borders;
Its living shores have been cut up,
And the peninsula holds airy forms,
While somewhat feminine is its silhouette of bays:
Of Baskaya and of Genoa'a lazy bow.
The native land of conquerors -
This Europe dressed in rags of Blessed alliances:
The heel of Spain, the Italy's medusa,
As well as tender Poland, in the absence of a king.
Oh, Europe of the Caesars! Since those far days when towards Bonaparte
The Metternich has pointed its good feather, -
First time in hundred years or so and right before my eyes,
There shifts your mystic map!
- 1914
Lamarck
Once there lived an old man shy as toddlers,
He was such a clumsy, touchy patriarch....
Who's that fencing for our mother nature's honor?
But of course, the flaming old Lamarck!
If all life on Earth is mere correction,
Then for a brief and well-escheated day,
On the moving ladder, Lamarck-fashioned,
Right atop the final step I'd stay.
I’ll descend right down to worms and whisker-leggeds,
Over nimble gangplanks, over slopes,
But then, rustling through the snakes and lizards,
I'd compact myself, and like a proteus, be gone.
Oh, at last I'd don the fatal mantle,
But refuse myself the blood a'boil,
And with countless suckers growing from my skin-cells
I would summersault into the ocean foam.
We have passed the roaming squads of insects
Their eyes as small shot-glasses brimmed
When he said that nature's all just breaks and fissures,
There's no sight, – this view will be your end.
He then spoke again: enough of all this sounding;
Your young love for Mozart was in vain,
For a spider deafness is arriving,
And this failure's stronger than our strength.
To Marina Tsvetaeva
With no belief in resurrection's marvel,
We promenaded at the graveyard.
- Why, do you know the place where all the grounds surrounding
Strike a resemblance to the very hills
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Where finally breaks off our Russian
Above a dark and outlandish sea.
Away from monastery slopes
A spacious meadow scuttles off.
Oh, from the open spaces of Vladimir, I didn't wish to travel south,
But in this darkened, wooden
Village of god's fools
To stay with such a foggy-headed Nun - this can't end well at all.
I plant a kiss upon an elbow tanned
And then upon the parting on a waxen forehead.
I know that it’s remained for quite a while under a pale and golden lock.
I kiss the forearm, where still does whiten
The indentation from a bracelet.
Ah, but old Taurica's flaming summer sure miracles does work.
How quickly you assumed a dark complexion
And came to see our meager Saviour,
You kissed him on and on, without a moment's pause,
And once in Moscow walked with such proud airs.
All that remains to us is but a name:
A wondrous sound, and for a lengthy stretch,
So do receive now from my palms
The sand that's poured from hand to hand.
- 1916
Joseph Stalin
We live, yet not feeling a country beneath us,
Our speeches inaudible ten steps away
Yet, where ring enough words for just half-a-chat;
There they’d surely recall the climber of Kremlin..
Thick fingers of his are, like worms, fat indeed,
While his words, like pound weights, are ever correct.
His huge cockroach whiskers are true and fine laughter
And his massive boot-tops both sparkle and shine.
Around him stands a rabble of thin-necked leaders,
While he plays with the services of half-breed humans,
Of their ranks some whimper, some whistle and meow,
He alone of them pokes and pounds,
Like horseshoes, he forges order after order -
Launched into a groin or someone's forehead,
Launched into an eye, or somebody's brow.
Each of his executions
Like a raspberry seems,
While a wide chest is
A real good sturgeon.
- November 1933