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.