Sasha Chorny
A stylized donkey

(Aria for a broken voice)

My head's a dark lantern with shattered panes
And open to the winds on every side,
I wander around with drunk women of nights,
In the mornings doctors inspect my insides.

I'm a boil on the seat of Russian verse's fine name.
Let thunder burst me in four hundred parts,
I'll strip naked and win a scandalous fame
And squat like a blind beggar where several roads part.

I love oranges and things that happen to rhyme.
I've a macaco monkey's spirits. I've got nerves of steel.
Should any fool strike an envious pose
And angrily scream ... "It's not poetry but crap!"

It's all lies. I'm the boil on verse's worn seat,
A glossy pink crimson, a harmonious spot
Whose head is whiter than a burned magnesium flare:
I'm a mannered galant, a familiar but broken-down fop.

Oh, you garrulous, resonant hocus-pocus:
I'll peck you and kick you, I'll bite at your arm,
If you don't understand then you're ignorant fools.
To hell with you all. I scorn the crowd and will write...

All the same I shall write, with my belly and legs,
With my nostrils I'll write, with my heels and my head
I'll give free range to my twopenny ideas,
I'll rhyme it all up with two scrambled eggs;
For the sake of good style. I'll crawl up the wall
And stand on my hands with shame.

Translated by Bernard Meares