Demyan Bedny
None Knew

(April 22, 1870)

A day like any Russian day.
The same grey drabness grimed the street.
A grim voice roared, “Get on your way!”
the policeman at his corner beat.
The priest, in gaudy vestments, proud
through the cathedral-service sidled;
and drunk from dawn, a rowdy crowd
around the dramshop entry idled.
The marketwomen brawled with passion,
buzzing like flies on honeypots.
Middleclass wives, all mad for fashion,
poked through the stalls of cotton-lots.
At an official door, dismayed
and awed, a peasant dumbly pored
over the faded prints displayed,
the yellowing orders on the board.
The fireman in the tower went round,
and round again, like a chained bear.
The sergeant rattled oaths and frowned
on soldiers drilling in the square.
The carts went winding to the quays
where flour-white dockers took the load.
A student, ragged at the knees,
among the guards, went down the road.
A worker — boozy wits astray —
was bawling someone out, exploding:
“Goodbye poor student all forlorn...”

None knew. Beneath her cross of scorn
our Russia stumbled on her way.
That day like any other day,
that day of days — Lenin was born.

Translated by Jack Lindsay