… I worked on Campfire. In that dismal hole,
a long way from the ratrace and newsmakers,
I met a hundred – two, for all I know,
transparent youths and most uncomely maidens.
Down with a cold, they’d creep up to my desk,
and, with a touch of arrogant flirtation,
announce: ‘I’ve brought along a couple of texts.’
An editor, to them I was like Satan.
Shielded behind their vast pretentiousness,
they talked about the text, as taught by Lotman,
as if it were an impenetrable mass,
a slab of concrete with an armature in.
It all was neither fish nor fowl, but verbiage
let down with limpness so it turned to mush;
but all the same, from time to time I managed
to print this nonsense. God will be my judge.
Frost. In the Tauride Garden, sunset stripe
showed yellow, and the snow beneath was rosy.
And people’s idle chatter as they stride
was monitored by vigilant Morózov –
Pavlik, the one who did that evil deed.
The chipboard portrait of this Pioneer
has chipped off from the cold, but still, indeed
they have it cosy.
Time went on ahead.
The first day of another month approached, and
the secretary counts out our paltry screw.
And time went on, begging nobody’s pardon,
and landed everyone in a different do.
Now, some get stoned on strong tea in the GULag,
some in the Bronx make war upon the roach;
in mental homes yet others cluck and cuckoo,
brushing the baby devils from their coats.