The cult of personality is stained,
But after forty years, the cult
Of gray monotony and disdain
Persists like in the days of old
Each coming day appears lackluster,
Until it’s truly hard to bear,
It brings but photographic clusters
Of pig-like and inhuman stares.
The cult of narrow-minded thinking
Is likewise cherished and extolled,
And people shoot themselves, while drinking,
Unable to sustain it all.
Культ личности забрызган грязью,
Но на сороковом году
Культ зла и культ однообразья
Еще по-прежнему в ходу.
И каждый день приносит тупо,
Так что и вправду невтерпеж,
Фотографические группы
Одних свиноподобных рож.
И культ здоровья и мещанства
Еще по-прежнему в чести,
Так что стреляются от пьянства,
Не в силах этого снести.
«You're me in the way. I used to / Wlak so, without looking up. / Stop, passerby! Don't refuse to. / I beg and I pray you — stop! You'll read, as you lay the glowing / Red blossoms on the mound of grass: / Marina. And then more slowly: / The dates — of my birth and death. Yes...»
«The bed of a railway cutting / has tidy sheets. The steel-blue / parallel tracks ruled out / as neatly as staves of music. And over them people are driven / like possessed creatures from Pushkin / whose piteous song has been silenced. / Look, they’re departing, deserting. And yet l...»
«We are keeping an eye on the girls, so that the kvass / doesn’t go sour in the jug, or the pancakes cold, / counting over the rings, and pouring Anis / into the long bottles with their narrow throats straightening tow thread for the peasant woman: / ceremoniously, the house is filled with...»
«I’ll be late for the meeting / we arranged. When I arrive, my hair / will be grey. Yes, I suppose I grabbed / at Spring. And you set your hopes much too high. I shall walk with this bitterness for years / across mountains or town squares equally, / (Ophelia didn’t flinch at rue!) ...»