«The tune becomes a flower, / Unfolding, then shedding its petals. / It turns itself into sand and wind, / Flame-crazed, like a moth in spring, / Like the willow's branches, dipping into the water. A thousand years pass in an instant, / And the tune transforms itself into / A steady game...»
«To Roman Gul Even the graves are not tended in Russia, / Once they may have been, but I have forgotten. There is no Petersburg, no Moscow, no Kiev, / Once there may have been, alas I have forgotten. Neither seas, rivers do I know, nor frontiers. / But I know the Russian man's still there. ...»
«I walk and think of various things, / For myself weave a funeral wreath, / And in this hideous world I am / A stylishly solitary man. But suddenly I hear: war, ideas, / The last trump, the twentieth century... / And growing cold, I then recall — / I am a human being no more. Spasmic ...»
«Covered with a glory that had lost it luster, / Ringed by cretins, tricksters, hypocrites, / The two-headed eagle1 did not fall in battle / But died a horrible, degraded death. Grinning, one man said: "He made it!" / Another sobbed: "Lord, forgive..." / But no one guessed it was a stuffe...»