...this poet for several years has been kissing
the slipper of the Pope.
–From foreign newspapers
Like Dante in hell,
I stand among bandits and criminals,
among the fat-guts, the gorged, the mercenaries,
among the trifling, the vengeful, the dimwitted,
on a pile of bilious manure that sucks everything to the bottom:
sing, poet, sing with us in tune!
I stand firm – like a cliff.
And they swarm around me
in mire, in mud, the way serpents
entangle themselves in a ball and fall,
and thick mud covers their mouths...
And they,
apparently drunk, prattle something,
extend their hand to me and claw at my clothing.
O, be damned all of you – I don’t know you!
Don’t touch me, don’t howl!
Your own swamp – you said.
here are the doors to heaven,
but secretly you thought: let it be so,
just give us a chance to grow up,
we’ll still show them who we are.
Poets and nations will go with us.
There will be no feuds, no evil,
when instead of bloody banners
everyone overhead will see
his own eagle with a pointed beak...
So on they went. Got mired in the mud. Got lost.
They choked in pogroms. Got drunk...
O, be damned again!
You won’t buy my soul
with laurel wreaths,
or with gold, or with bread, or with an eagle medal.
I stand firm – like a cliff.
1922