They wiped your slate
With snow, you’re not alive.
Bayonets twenty-eight
And bullet-holes five.
It’s a bitter present,
Love, but I’ve sewed it.
Russia, an old peasant
Killing his meat.
Не бывать тебе в живых,
Со снегу не встать.
Двадцать восемь штыковых,
Огнестрельных пять.
Горькую обновушку
Другу шила я.
Любит, любит кровушку
Русская земля.
«Enormous arboreal monster, hanging / high with rump of shocking size, / grips a girl who fetched a pail of water, / rolling at him her cajoling eyes. / Diddled for a moment, she’s an apple / on the branches of his shaggy arms. / Enormous monster — rather awful, / really — lolls b...»
«From the bag / To the floor things fell down. / And I think / That the world / Is only a grin / Glimmering / On the hanged man’s mouth.»
«My bag breaks / and everything falls to the floor. / It occurs to me / the world is a grin that flickers / on a hanged man’s dead face.»
«Winganging with golden writing / Of the thinnest veins, / The grasshopper put inside of his body sails / Many stems of riverside grass. / Pin-pin-pin! — a magpie’s blast. / Oh, swanarvel! / Oh, raise up!»