«Nowhere anything for eating, / all of Russia fading, freezing, / selling gramophones and blankets, / hats and chairs and anything / in exchange for wheat and millet / in the year nineteen-nineteen. Elder brother killed already, / and my dad already blind, / all our furniture long bart...»
«There once was a man by the name of Semyonov. / And Semyonov went out for a walk and lost his handkerchief. / And Semyonov started looking for a handkerchief and lost his hat. / And looking for a hat, he lost his jacket. / He began to look for a jacket and lost his boots. / – Yes – sa...»
«The smiles of summer are simply indistinct / And winter is too clear, / But I can unerringly pick out / Three autumns in each year. The first is a holiday chaos / Spiting the summer of yesterday. / Leaves fly like a schoolboy’s notes, / Like incense, the smell of smoke, / Everything...»
«Here the loveliest of young women fight / for the honour of marrying the hangmen; / here the righteous are tortured at night / and the resolute worn down by hunger»