Deutsch and Yarmolinsky, comps. Modern Russian Poetry. 1921.
OctoberAnatoly Marienhof
W
We have gone and sat down saucily,
Keeping our hats on,
Our feet on the table.
Since we don’t wash rags washed millions of times,
Since we suddenly dared,
Ear-splittingly, to bark: Wow!
Is as straight as a telephone pole,
Not my spine only, but the spines of all Russians,
For centuries hunched.
You say: Bedlam—
No milestones—no stakes—
Straight to the devil——. On the church porch our red cancan is glorious.
Droves of clouds at men’s beck and call,
And the sky like a woman’s cloak,
And no eyelash of sun.
We escort, mealy-mouthed, down the Tverskoi Prospekt….
Who will interrupt, who? The gallop of Scythian horses?
Violins bowing the Marseillaise?
Of steel bracelets for the globe
Should smoke his rotten tobacco as importantly
As the officer used to clink his stirrups?
And then dancing centuries.
We shall knock at all doors
And no one will say: Goddamyou, get out!
Before the footlights, in the center of the stage,
Not softy lyricists,
But flaming buffoons.
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.
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!
You are still whimpering lavishly.
Dunderheads!
Isn’t yesterday crushed, like a dove
By a motor
Emerging madly from the garage?