By Mikhail Kuzmin
The sailors from ancient families,
Enamored with far horizons,
Drinking wine amidst murky ports,
Embracing jolly foreign girls;
The dandies of the thirties who,
Imitative of d’Orse and Brummel.
Entered into their daily pose
The whole naiveté of a young race;
Important, with stars, the generals,
Who were once gentle rakes,
And from that managed to keep only
The jolly stories told over rum;
Always and forever, the very same ones;
Gentle actors without much talent,
Who’ve brought forth a school of foreign life,
who are putting on “Muhammad” in Russia
and are dying from an innocent Voltairism;
you are – the mademoiselles in bando,
playing the waltzes of Marcailou with feeling,
embroidering wallets with beads for grooms in distant expeditions,
cleansing themselves inside household churches,
and telling fortunes on cards;
economical, intelligent, estate-keeping women,
bragging of their reserves,
knowing how to forgive and to rip off,
and to get close to a person,
the mocking and the godly,
rising before dawn in the winter,
and the adorably-dumb flowers of theatrical
academies,
since childhood devoted to the art of dance,
tenderly perverted,
cleanly corrupted,
ruining husbands for dresses,
and seeing their children for half-an-hour a’day;
and further – far off – the courtesans of the silent
county courts,
some kind of strict boyars,
Frenchies, who having fled from the Revolution,
Were unable to ascend the guillotine –
all of you are, all of you, -
you were silent for your lengthy century,
and now you scream with hundreds of voices,
the dead, and yet living,
in me: the last, poor,
but having a tongue to speak for you,
and each drop of blood
is close to you,
hears you,
loves you;
and here you all are:
the gentle, the dumb, the touching, the close,
become blessed through me
for your speechless blessing.