By nature I’m a careless sod.
Who knows how many things I’ve lost –
the lines of verse, the friends, the keys,
the nights in alcoholic haze;
a conversation on the phone
and half an hour is stolen, gone;
somehow my kids all by themselves
have suddenly grown up and left.
The other day I was running low
and asked my gift to make a loan
to keep me solvent. Well, take that!
My wondrous gift turned me down flat.
Brutus, you too! (et tu! i.e.),
how could you turn your back on me?
The Muse of Memory? O no,
she disappeared long ago.
The Muse of Reason? Not a chance,
she only steps to her own dance,
gives nothing in advance, the whore.
My bosom pal, the Tambov Wolf,
shakes its grey head as it says nay:
nothing to give, howl as you may.
It’s ages since the Muses sighed,
my brain has long been occupied
by an accountant; nay – a spook.
He bids me take an empty book,
set down the hour, the day, the month,
the year, and enter: written off.