Art by Viktor Deni 1931.
Poem by Demyan Bedny.
The Landowner glares like a ferocious watchdog
The Kulak [rich peasant] snorts through his bulbous nose
The habitual drunk boozes his woes away
The [village] priest frantically whoops and and wails.
The corrupt journalist spits and hisses
The capitalist sharpens his tusks
The Menshevik rages like a madman
The White Soldier effs and blinds.
These dogs that have not been thrown into jail —
Everyone defending the bad old ways —
Put an evil curse on the Five-Year Plan
And declare war on it.
They threaten its disruption, realising
That it spells their utter ruination.
Помещик смотрит злым барбосом,
Кулак сопит бугристым носом,
Пьянчуга с горя пьет запоем,
Поп оголтелым воем воет,
Шипит продажный журналист,
Острит клыки капиталист,
Меньшивичок вовсю ярится,
Вояка белый матерится, —
Псы не посаженные в клетку,
Все кто стоит за старину,
Зло проклинают пятилетку
И объявляют ей войну,
Грозят ей срывом понимая,
Что в ней — погибель их прямая!
«Armed with wasp-vision, with the vision of wasps / that suck, suck, suck the earth's axis, / I'm filled by the whole deep vein of my life / and hold it here in my heart and in vain. And I don't draw, don't sing, / don't draw a black-voiced bow over strings: / I only drink, drink, drink in...»
«Today is the name day of Our Lady of Smolensk, / Dark blue incense drifts over the grass, / And the flowing of the Requiem / Is no longer sorrowful, but radiant. / And the rosy little widows lead / Their boys and girls to the cemetery / To visit father’s grave. / But the grave...»
«Who knows what such fame is like! / At what price did he buy the right, / The possibility or the paradise / To joke about it all so wisely and cunningly, / To be mysteriously silent, / And to call a foot a “footsie”?»
«I do not deserve this praise, rather, / And Sappho doesn’t matter in that, / I know the reason another, / But nothing of it can be read. / Let somebody save self by running, / And others — by nods from their "bliss". / These poems were all underlying / With text, that’s like look...»