Maximilian Voloshin
The Rioter

1

I am the voice that cries in the wilderness
Of the swarming crowds in the spasms of cities
In whirlpools of the streets and railway stations 
The least inhabited of all the deserts on earth.

2

I was told:
        — Go to the market places —
The time has come,
To call each slave to riot.
But do not cast the truths at them, but blast
The layers of their frozen conceptions:
Let dormant truth arise like fire
From the deepest pit of soul,
That opened itself by thunder of explosion!
The one will get in trouble who persuades a fool!
Who once accepts the truth by faith alone,
        Becomes blinded by it,
The preacher is driving before him
A herd of those harassed by truth:
        Compulsion by the truth
        Is worse than any killing:
Who wants the riot — sow the contradictions,
Who wants to give the freedom — tempt,
Be an incediary,
Be a poison, be a trichina
Be a gadfly that drives the herds insane.

3

You are prisoners of self-made labyrinths!
You — corpses in the coffins clamped with nails!
You — fanatics, who throw bombs
Into the Parlaments, stock exchanges, and palaces, —
And you imagine that you can destroy with dynamite
All that which sprouts from within —
From your own self with irrepressible force!
I call you to rebel against
The laws of your habitual nature and your mind:
To jump out of humanity —
To final madness —
The Transformation of your own self.

4

Who wrote on those walls with blood:
'Your freedom, brotherhood, equality
Or death?'
There is no freedom.
But there is liberation.
Among the slaves the single place
That's adequate for freeman is a prison.
There is no brotherhood among the humans
That doesnТt taste like brotherhood of Cain:
And verily who's tied by blood
More so, than an executioner and victim?
There is no equality -- only balance
Between revolting forces
And two walls fallen on each other
Are forming single arch
Do you believe that goal of culture -- being happy,
That general well being is an ideal?
The suffering and hunger -- that's the chisel
By which the death is sculpting human being
Not in equality or brotherhood
Or freedom
But only in the death the truth of riot lies.

5

There is no Law — there only is compulsion
All crimes were created by the Law.
Those cramped in herd are called delinquent:
To judge them and to punish aren't for you.
Before the criminal
The government is faulty.
Do not supress the wills, but build the channels
For the excess of force.
The cause of evil should be understood
And passion should not be so feared
Don't dread them both to penetrate in you:
All evil of the universe
Is ought in oneself to be accepted
And by your own virtue
Be transformed
But you have set up prisons and restrictions
The Court extinguishes goodwill
The Government — a riot,
The doctor puts out life
And priest puts out conscience.
We have enough commandments for the 'no'
All 'do not kill', 'don't do', and 'do not steal', —
To be replaced by one commandment: 'BURN!'
Your God is in yourself,
And don't go look for other
Neither in heavens nor on earth:
Check all external world
There is a law and reason
But there is no love
Because its source is You!
God is this love
And love is raging fire
That will devour the Universe
And will transform the flesh
You listen carefully to all the flow of life
And see the double stream:
The growth and decay.
Run not from evil, but only from extinction.
And sin and passion are life's expression
Sterility —
It is not at all a virtue.

6

Nor crime, nor creativity, nor work
All cannot be repaid
The payment for the labor is absurd:
        Just alms
        Are contribution worthy of creator
        Alike the tree's your ripened fruits
        Shall fall on earth
And then extend your branches
For charity produced by light and rain.
Was your gift taken?
Given and returned?
All needs a compensation?
You are such petty dealers!
You fabricated gratefulness
To catch the good in embryonic state
And strangle it.
Do not bestow the giver
Give someone else
For him to give the people
Then contribution thrown to the sea
Will stir the souls, widening like wave.
You fight for property?
But who belongs to whom?
To owner — a thing?
Or are the things manipulating humans?
The property is that
As gift which can be rendered
You gave it out, and have become that richer
But you are slaves of all
        which you cannot surrender.

7

With ourselves we carry only that,
The ownership of which we have refused,
And is it true that you'll remain to keep
The iron church containing morbid ghosts?
You were primordial ooze in ocean depths
And carried it inside your own veins,
You have renounced light of sun,
To start bonfire in the caves.
Disintegration of the balances of forces
You wasted to contortion of machines,
In single moment of the fierce explosion
You have depleted powers of fire
Bringing the age of Prometheus to finish,
And now the new age of explosion is rising.
It used to be that furnace of the hearth
Was forging clan, altar and state,
From now on, its furnace of explosion
That will alloy world's elements anew.
You have perceived the plaits of inert masses,
You measured their weight
And broke apart their atoms,
And in the depth of evil you were planted
Till present days like land mine
Lying charged in depths of substance. [..]

Translated by Natasha Levitan