Thirty years now Russia’s lived in fetters,
in Magadan, in Kolyma —
but the Russia that will live for ever
is the one now dying in Kolyma.
Россия тридцать лет живёт в тюрьме.
На Соловках или на Колыме.
И лишь на Колыме и Соловках
Россия та, что будет жить в веках.
Всё остальное — планетарный ад:
Прокля́тый Кремль, злощастный Сталинград.
Они достойны только одного —
Огня, испепелящего его.
«“You are waiting? You are nervous? This / Is delirium. You are going to open up / To him? No! Understand this: a madman / Is knocking at your door; God knows where / And with whom he has spent the entire / Night, ragged, and his speech wild, / And his hand full of pebbles; at any momen...»
«The green candles are melting. / The censer glimmers dimly, up to / The very shoulders something / Has just sunk into the earth. At gravestones someone’s lips / Are soundlessly praying for breath. / Somebody leaning “from the cross” / Gives them yellow water to drink... “Will i...»
«Night does not melt. Night is like / Stone, only ice melts, weeping, / And a flame spreads through one’s / Body on its fantastic flight. But the ice-pack on one’s head / Mutters in vain while melting: / In reckoning, it does not remember / That there are only two pillows. And that ...»
«Oh, how I feel the accumulated burden of / Poisoned nights and grubby, pallid days! You, / Cards, is there anything at the same time more / Alluring than you, more vulgar and frightful? You are terrible with a drunken headache’s tenderness, / And they prefer you to science, to love, to po...»