| |
| WE trample filial obedience, | |
| We have gone and sat down saucily, | |
| Keeping our hats on, | |
| Our feet on the table. | |
| |
| You don’t like us, since we guffaw with blood, | 5 |
| Since we don’t wash rags washed millions of times, | |
| Since we suddenly dared, | |
| Ear-splittingly, to bark: Wow! | |
| |
| Yes, sir, the spine | |
| Is as straight as a telephone pole, | 10 |
| Not my spine only, but the spines of all Russians, | |
| For centuries hunched. | |
| |
| Who makes a louder noise on earth now than we? | |
| You say: Bedlam— | |
| No milestones—no stakes— | 15 |
| Straight to the devil——. On the church porch our red cancan is glorious. | |
| |
| What, you don’t believe? Here are hordes, | |
| Droves of clouds at men’s beck and call, | |
| And the sky like a woman’s cloak, | |
| And no eyelash of sun. | 20 |
| |
| Jesus is on the cross again, and Barabbas | |
| We escort, mealy-mouthed, down the Tverskoi Prospekt…. | |
| Who will interrupt, who? The gallop of Scythian horses? | |
| Violins bowing the Marseillaise? | |
| |
| Has it ever before been heard of, that the forger | 25 |
| Of steel bracelets for the globe | |
| Should smoke his rotten tobacco as importantly | |
| As the officer used to clink his stirrups? | |
| |
| You ask—And then? | |
| And then dancing centuries. | 30 |
| We shall knock at all doors | |
| And no one will say: Goddamyou, get out! | |
| |
| We! We! We are everywhere: | |
| Before the footlights, in the center of the stage, | |
| Not softy lyricists, | 35 |
| But flaming buffoons. | |
| |
| Pile rubbish, all the rubbish in a heap, | |
| And like Savonarola, to the sound of hymns, | |
| Into the fire with it…. Whom should we fear? | |
| When the mundiculi of puny souls have become—worlds. | 40 |
| |
| Every day of ours is a new chapter in the Bible. | |
| Every page will be great to thousands of generations. | |
| We are those about whom they will say: | |
| The lucky ones lived in 1917. | |
| And you are still shouting: They perish! | 45 |
| You are still whimpering lavishly. | |
| Dunderheads! | |
| Isn’t yesterday crushed, like a dove | |
| By a motor | |
| Emerging madly from the garage? | 50 |
| |
