“The Unkillable Poor”: Dana Gioia and Alexander Voloshin at the Crossroads

Last week saw the publication of Dana Gioia’s Meet Me at the Lighthouse, a perfect collection of poems. Dana has been a mentor and a friend to me, but had he and I never met, the pages of this book would have lodged themselves just as firmly in my heart. In fact, we came to know each other through one of its masterpieces, “The Ballad of Jesus Ortiz.” It reached me through a mutual friend, the late Scott Timberg, and I leapt at the chance to publish it in the Los Angeles Review of Books. The ballad tells the true story of Dana’s great-grandfather, a Mexican immigrant to the US who was killed in an argument over a bar tab. It is a poem of the West, and others in Dana’s book — including the titular “Meet Me at the Lighthouse” — bring the reader even closer to the turf (and surf) he and I share, Southern California. I quoted from his psalms and laments for Los Angeles before, but let me do so again:

I praise myself, a mutt of mestizo and mezzogiorno,
The seed of exiles and violent men,
Disfigured by the burdens they shouldered to survive.
Broken or bent, their boast was their suffering.

I praise my ancestors, the unkillable poor,
The few who escaped disease or despair —
The restless, the hungry, the stubborn, the scarred.
Let us praise the dignity of their destitution.

To celebrate the launch of this book-long, bittersweet song of praise for the generations who made us and made the US, I’ll offer my translation of a buoyant chapter from Alexander Voloshin’s On the Tracks and at Crossroads, which depicts those cast out from the Russian Empire by war and revolution at, well, a crossroads, temporarily establishing themselves in Harlem and learning American ways (paychecks! Coca-Cola! chewing gum!) before they are lured by the weather and the glamour to Dana’s and my old stomping grounds. Incidentally, one of the finest poems in Meet Me at the Lighthouse is titled “At the Crossroads,” and you can read it here.

Chapter Two

Those who don’t work, don’t eat.
— a slogan of 1918

The days turned into weeks and months,
then, bit by bit, not all at once,
old residents of Harlem found
themselves inside a Russian town.
An exile’s heart is quick to heal
with help from a familiar meal 
at one of our new restaurants…

In front of these beloved haunts,
beneath the early evening stars,
you see neat little rows of cars — 
not one of them the latest Ford,
only what exiles can afford…
Still, such a pleasure, in warm May,
to leave town, even for a day,
not in some tram — behind the wheel,
kicking up dust with tons of steel!

Now aunts and uncles, moms and pops
buy all their groceries at “shops,”
and every Saturday they get
their “checks,” earned with abundant sweat…

Old worries have been put aside —
we got dressed up, regained our pride,
put on some weight, even began
acquiring new things again…
Men have umbrellas, suits, and canes,
and watches on their wrists or chains.
Our shelves hold Bunin and Dumas;
our closets — coats, new hats of straw;
our dressers — ironed shirts and ties;
our pockets — coins of every size…
We have our phones and baths and showers,
and sleep serenely — all eight hours…
The ladies too are well attired
in all the finery they desired…
Hard work, installment plans — however,
they got it: better late than never.
Now they’re all draped with fancy boas —
each nail on finger and on toe is
as crimson as a drop of blood…
At evening gatherings, like buds,
they open up and, in full bloom,
go whirling all about the room!
They spin a fine thread of flirtation,
recovering their former station…

And we’ve acquired new tastes, too:
drink Coca-Cola, often chew
what’s known as “gum,” eat grapefruit slices.
Only the finest food suffices:
we claim to be, with some bravado,
true connoisseurs of avocado.
We’ve learned the ways, as you can see,
of this, the nation of the free…

No longer foreigners, we can
almost be called American.
Now, when we exiles meet anew,
we say, “Hello! How do you do?”

---

Глава вторая

Кто не работает — тот не ест.
Из лозунгов 1918-го года

Катились дни, текли недели,
В Харлеме беженцы осели,
И вырос русский городок:
Не то Лубны, не то — Моздок!…
Закрылись сердца злые раны,
Зато — открылись рестораны,
Столовки, русских клубов ряд…
У клубов вечером стоят
«Первобумажников» машины, —

Пускай у них истерты шины,
Пусть это «Форды» древних лет,
Пусть дребезжат, как «драндулет».
Но как приятно теплым маем
За город ехать — не трамваем,
А свой вести автомобиль,
Гудя и поднимая пыль!…

Все дяди, тети, мамы, папы
Пристроились и ходят в «шапы»,
И каждый русский человек
В субботу получает «чек»…

Тревоги прежняя уснули, —
Мы — приоделись, отдохнули,
Мы — пополнели и опять
Вещами стали обростать…
У всех — костюмы, шляпы, палки,
Зонты, часы и зажигалки,
На полке — Бунин и Готье,
В шкапу — пальто и канотье,
В комоде — галстуки, рубашки,
В карманах — мелочь и бумажки…
Есть ванна, душ и телефон…
И безмятежно сладок сон…
И дамы — счастливы и рады:
У них — чулки, белье, наряды…
Пришлось работать, но зато —
В разсрочку куплено пальто,
Горжетка из какой-то шкуры,
И кровью блещут маникюры
И на руках и на ногах…
На танцевальных вечерах
Им для веселья — ночи мало!…
Оне цветут и в вихре бала —
Сплетают тонко флирта нить,
Чтоб — вновь былое пережить!…

Прошли и вкусовую школу:
Пьем Джинджерел и Кока-Колу,
Едим грейпфруты и жуем
Традиционный «чуинг-гом»…
Учить уж больше нас не надо,
Как нужно кушать «авокадо»,
«Образовались» мы вполне,
Живя в свободной сей стране!…

И мы уже не иностранцы,
И мы — почти американцы,
И мы умеем на ходу
Бросать: «Хелло!… Хав ду ю ду!»…

Advertisement

“The Beatnik’s Heart is Tender”: Vernon Duke in Venice West

Beatniks from Venice West at LA City Hall

In a recent rambling conversation with Micaela Brinsley, who has a rare gift for drawing people out, I went on — and on, and on — about a poem from My Hollywood in which I imagine Sarah Bernhardt on the amusement pier at Venice Beach. I’ve written about my Venice diptych before, describing the area in which it’s set as “a fanciful corner of LA developed by the fanciful Abbot Kinney in 1905.” In my interview with Micaela, I add a bit to the picture, explaining that Venice is “a place that goes up and down in status rapidly. One decade it’s the worst part of Los Angeles, the next decade it’s the priciest.”

One of its low points, in terms of economic status, happened to coincide with its cultural renaissance. In the 1950s, Venice West became the hub of LA’s beatnik scene, Southern California’s answer to San Francisco’s North Beach. None of the poets who haunted the rundown seaside cafés of Venice achieved the status of Allen Ginsberg or Lawrence Ferlinghetti, but they left their mark, and one of the institutions born of that moment — Beyond Baroque — is still a powerhouse in LA letters, hosting weekly workshops and readings.

If you care to revisit this mostly vanished beat paradise, you’re in luck. It’s the subject of a beautifully produced, fawning “ethnographic” study titled The Holy Barbarians (1959), written by Polish-born Jewish-American journalist and poet Lawrence Lipton (1898-1975). It’s also captured on film in Curtis Harrington’s truly eerie independent horror picture Night Tide (1961). And you can even hear some of the scene’s authentic sounds thanks to USC’s audiovisual preservation team.

But my favorite portrait of Venice’s beats belongs to the pen of another foreign-born observer, the jauntily wistful Vernon Duke. As part of his early-’60s cycle of LA poems, Duke presents us with a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a cultural dropout — perhaps Stuart Z. Perkoff? But then, why should I be surprised? Although he loved the good life, Duke was ever the bohemian at heart, and perhaps the sight of these youthful idealists, with dirt under their fingernails and heaven in their eyes, reminded him of his old ill-fated friend from Constantinople, the poet Boris Poplavsky. Read the poem below and then dip into the older bohemia of Russian Montparnasse with the help of Bryan Karetnyk’s new translation of Poplavsky’s Homeward from Heaven.

Beatnik (Venice, Calif.)

His ears stick out through stringy,
uneven, greasy hair.
Bedraggled with insomnia,
he hasn’t bathed all year.
His long arms dangle loosely
as through a toothless scowl
he wheezes out the blues or
simply emits a howl.
Pity virtue’s defender,
helpless and innocent;
the beatnik’s heart is tender,
his head, hidden in sand.
Upon a scuffed old drumhead
he rattles a tattoo
to drown out inner torment
and summon his own dormant
nirvana, pure and true.
“Remember?” No… he doesn’t…
He’s happy in his cell:
the vague eternal “present.”
Tomorrow is unpleasant:
a gaping door to hell.
His eyes are both concealed by
his bangs — a tangled knot…
Still, maybe he can see what
the rest of us cannot.

---

Beatnik (Venice, Calif.)

Он лопоухий, он лохматый,
Всклокоченная голова.
Бедняк, бессонницей измятый,
Не мылся месяц или два.
Он несуразный, он кургузый,
Зубов передних больше нет —
Тем легче прогнусавить блюзы
Иль просто взвыть на Божий свет.
Добра беспомощный защитник,
Ему стяжанье невдомёк,
И прячет простодушный битник,
Как страус, голову в песок.
На порыжелом барабане
Он бьет неверное tattoo,
Чтоб заглушить трезвон терзаний
И доморощенной нирване
Предать последнюю мечту.
«Ты помнишь ли?» — О, нет … не помнит,
Живёт для смутного «теперь»,
Забившись в угол свой укромный,
А завтра — анфилада комнат
И в ад зияющая дверь.
Хоть бородой лицо закрыто,
Из-за волос не видно глаз,
Но, может быть, ему открыто
Всё, что неведомо для нас.

“Each Movement of Bold Hands”: Igor Avtamonov’s “Flight”

Flights have been much on my mind lately. 2022 was a year of often involuntary, often painful displacements for a great many people. Jenny and I, too, undertook some major journeys, which, for all their difficulties, have been rewarding beyond measure. We now find ourselves living in Oklahoma and caring for our seven-month-old twins, Nina and Charlie. I’ve stepped down as Editor-in-Chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books and have taken up a position at the University of Tulsa, teaching courses in the English Department alongside Jenny. And at the very end of December we finally managed to fly our beloved cats, Pushkin and Nora, from LA, reuniting our family.

LARB has played an important role in my life from the time it was founded by Tom Lutz in 2011. I was its first volunteer Noir Editor and became a regular contributor. I served as the journal’s Executive Editor from 2016 to 2020, when I was named Editor-in-Chief. A few days ago I officially passed the torch to Michelle Chihara. Working with LARB’s brilliant staff and contributors has been an honor and a pleasure, and I’ll always support the organization in every way I can.

Likewise, although I’ve left Los Angeles for now, the city will always be my home. Jenny, the twins, and I will return to it frequently. The collection of poems I published in 2022, My Hollywood, is no farewell note — it’s a love letter, and the romance continues. I’ll be looking for and sharing LA stories all my days.

One such story made a deep impression on me last month. It concerns the tragic death of Rex Minter, mayor of Santa Monica from 1963 to 1967. A single-engine Cessna in which Minter was the passenger was forced to make an emergency landing on a stretch of Santa Monica Beach and flipped upside down into the surf. The pilot survived but Minter died of a heart attack. He was 95 years old.

The unusual setting and the fact that the former mayor was a lifelong pilot combine to lend this sad incident a measure of poetic resonance. The story made me think of a naively optimistic sonnet by the SoCal émigré Igor Avtamonov (1913-1995), about whom I’ve posted before. He too was a passionate aviator from an early age. I suspect lifting off was, for him, a near-religious experience; it was certainly a means of escape, if only temporarily, from the mundane troubles of life in exile.

Flight

Wide open space as far as we can see,
a fanciful mirage of clouds… Below,
mountains like clumps, a meadow’s streak of green,
a snaking river’s steady eastward flow…

Our gaze is greedy… And our greed’s rewarded…
We crawled like dung beetles just days before,
but we pressed on. No, we would not be thwarted:
and now we live our dreams — and now we soar.

The plane obeys each movement of bold hands
and pierces through the clouds just like a plow…
The city lies beneath us, a crushed spider,

its street-legs sprawling out, row upon row…
While we continue to climb higher, higher,
and in salute to Earth our wings expand!

---

Полёт

Со всех сторон простор – внизу, вверху и сбоку,
Причудливо висят миражем тучи вкруг,
Под нами кочки гор, мазком зелёный луг,
Среди полей, змеясь, река бежит к востоку…

И жадный ищет взгляд… И всё доступно оку…
Мы ползали вчера, как по навозу жук,
Но вот упорством дум, усильями наук,
Мечты воплощены и мы летим высоко!

Послушен самолет движеньям смелых рук;
Пронзает облака, как землю резал плуг…
Под нами улицы размеченные в строку…

Средь дыма город там – распластанный паук!
А наши два крыла раскинулись широко,
И с неба шлём земле победный мощный звук!

“Good-bye, Dear Europe”: Vladimir Nabokov and Alexander Voloshin Say “Prash-chai”

Alexander Voloshin in The World and the Flesh (1932),
playing a peasant breaking into a ritzy restaurant
during the Russian Revolution.

In 1941, a year after he and his family escaped Europe by the skin of their teeth, Nabokov began his Anglophone career in earnest at Wellesley College and published one of his best known poems, “Softest of Tongues,” in The Atlantic. A farewell to Russian, the language in which Nabokov first proved his mastery, the poem also demonstrates, with characteristic irony, the speaker’s mastery of the new language’s “clumsy tools of stone.”

To many things I’ve said the word that cheats
the lips and leaves them parted (thus: prash-chai
which means “good-bye”) — to furnished flats, to streets,
to milk-white letters melting in the sky;
to drab designs that habit seldom sees,
to novels interrupted by the din
of tunnels, annotated by quick trees,
abandoned with a squashed banana skin;
to a dim waiter in a dimmer town,
to cuts that healed and to a thumbless glove;
also to things of lyrical renown
perhaps more universal, such as love.
Thus life has been an endless line of land
receding endlessly… And so that’s that,
you say under your breath, and wave your hand,
and then your handkerchief, and then your hat.
To all these things I’ve said the fatal word,
using a tongue I had so tuned and tamed
that — like some ancient sonneteer — I heard
its echoes by posterity acclaimed.
But now thou too must go; just here we part,
softest of tongues, my true one, all my own…
And I am left to grope for heart and art
and start anew with clumsy tools of stone.

There’s a minor but significant macaronic touch to “Softest of Tongues,” which underscores the fact that, for Nabokov, the poem marks a moment of transition. In it he introduces into English the Russian word “прощай” — which he spells phonetically, “prash-chai” — suggesting that, to him, it means more than its Anglophone counterpart, “good-bye.” Interestingly, at around the same time, another Russophone émigré, the White Army officer-turned-Hollywood extra Alexander Voloshin, used the same device in the brief first “chapter” of the second part of his mock epic, On the Track and at Crossroads. He too rejects the English “good bye,” which he introduces in Latin script, in favor of the Russian “прощай.”

There the similarities end. Whereas Nabokov’s poem is, despite its author’s distaste for sentimentality, a rather sentimental affair, Voloshin’s is light and buoyant, though also — in its broader context — ironic. Unlike Nabokov, Voloshin readily cottons to the unsophisticated materialism and rampant consumerism of Yankee life. And why shouldn’t he? Isn’t there some truth in the proposition that we all want a bit of comfort, even if that’s not all we want? The rest of Voloshin’s epic will show that the equal treatment he celebrates at the end of this chapter is in some crucial ways illusory. And yet, although he’s painfully aware of the human imperfection and of the terrors all around, he remains at least half-convinced that we live in the best of all possible worlds. He’s not quite Pangloss or Leibniz, our Voloshin, but neither is he Adorno and Horkheimer, his LA neighbors in the early 1940s. So, are you with Nabokov or with Voloshin? Heck, why choose?

Thus ended our nomadic days.
“Good-bye,” dear Europe: we part ways…
In fact, this is no mere “good bye” —
that’s right, dear Europe, it’s “prash-chai”…
Enough of wandering round and round.
We’ve finally found solid ground.
For in the end, our fondest wish is
to settle down, acquire dishes
of different kinds, and forks, and knives —
in other words, live bourgeois lives
the way the Yankees seem to do.
Oh, there’s hard work ahead, that’s true,
but our past grief is out of sight:
the sky is blue, the sun shines bright.
And also — most importantly —
here we’re all treated equally!…

---

Итак — окончены скитанья!
Good bye, Европа! … До свиданья!…
А впрочем, даже не good bye
Европе скажем, а — прощай!…
Довольно по миру мотаться,
Поря уже обосноваться,
У каждого желанье есть,
Как говоря — “на землю сесть”!…
Обзавестись посудой разной
И образ жизни буржуазный
Вести, как “янки” здесь ведут…
Пусть впереди тяжёлый труд,
Но в прошлом горести отныне, —
Нам светит солнце, небо сине,
А главное — Руси Сыны
Со всеми здесь уравнены!…

“They Make Their Exit, Arm in Arm”: Vernon Duke and LA’s LGBTQ History

Malibu Pier area in the 1950s

It was a multifarious delight to see My Hollywood praised in The New York Review of Books, in a wonderful piece by Anahid Nersessian, a professor of English at UCLA, that paired the collection with Adam Kirsch’s own loose (in all but the metrical sense) LA memoir-in-verse, The Discarded Life. Nersessian’s reading is generous and her phrasing is lapidary; she doesn’t groan at my rhymes and detects in my poems an “air of upbeat sorrow,” as well as “an émigré mood, defined by the conviction that things could always be worse.” How true, that last bit. And it gave me special pleasure to see the critic connect this mood to the work of the composer Vernon Duke, né Dukelsky, whose Russophone Angeleno poems I’ve been translating for some time. Not only does Nersessian mention the two I included in the book, “Farmers Market” and “Sunset Strip,” but she also (I could hardly believe my eyes!) quotes from this very blog:

Duke is best known as a songwriter and lyricist who collaborated with Ira Gershwin and Yip Harburg, but he also wrote poetry, including the archly titled The Sorrows of Elderly Werther, published in 1962. As Dralyuk explains elsewhere, “The Sorrows includes an entire sequence of poems dedicated to Los Angeles: portraits of a faded movie star on Sunset Blvd., a toothless beatnik in Venice Beach, an old heiress in Beverly Hills, etc.”

This unexpected appearance inspired me to translate another of Duke’s portraits, which is perhaps the most daring of all. Set in a Malibu bar, the poem depicts a conversation between two men — one older, the other younger — who, by night’s end, leave together. Is what we witness a prelude to an exchange of sexual favors for money? Part of a longstanding arrangement? Is the younger man a part-time “hustler” or a kept man? The questions are left open. I find the poem to be daring not only because it depicts a homosexual liaison, but because the speaker passes little to no judgment on what he sees. If anything, it’s the disparity in age and economic resources between the men that comes in for implicit critique; yet even this disparity is treated as a fact of life. On a humid, fragrant night in Malibu, one man gets what he needs, the other what he desires. Things could be worse.

Malibu

The fireflies of countless cars
sparkle and die out in a flash;
exhausted fishermen have cleared
the ocean of its final fish.
Now Malibu is humid, fragrant —
a plated slice of cantaloupe.
The night encloses in its coffin
the living corpse of daytime hope.
There’s precious little left for mortals:
white snow over a mug of beer,
a curious, peculiar torpor,
and waves, monotonous and drear.
Two at the bar — amid the hubbub,
they chat as if alone tonight;
Their trousers are as tight as rubber;
their shirts are neat and gleaming white.
One’s past his prime — passed it by plenty.
He’s rich, if looks do not deceive.
The other’s huge, and maybe twenty.
Wrestler, perhaps? Soldier on leave?
The younger one is downing whiskey;
the older sips Crème de Banane.
The Californian fog, all frisky,
tickles the eyes as it creeps in.
“How’s tricks, my boy?” “Oh, I’ve been better.
There isn’t any work these days.
“Yes, so I’ve read. Good luck, dear fellow.”
A second round. “Oh, by the way…
You got a fiver you can spare?
Landlady’s after me for rent…
I’m waiting on a package there…”
The old man’s eyes turn sharp, like flint:
“Five dollars isn’t nothing, friend.”
He pays the bill. “Let’s get some air.
It’s awful stuffy in this bar.”
Then, slowly and without a care,
they make their exit, arm in arm.

And now consider the fact that Duke’s book appeared in 1962, two years before Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man, which also works up to a scene of flirtation between two men — one older, the other younger — on a beach in Los Angeles, though it is far more moving than this. Duke’s collection also appeared a year before John Rechy rocked the Anglophone literary establishment with his stream-of-consciousness novel of the hustling lifestyle, City of Night. That novel incorporates the 1959 LGBT uprising at Cooper Do-nuts in Downtown LA, which took place a full decade before Stonewall. Along with the 1967 uprising at The Black Cat Tavern on Sunset Blvd., which is still standing, and the 1968 protest at The Patch on PCH in Wilmington, the Cooper Do-nuts “riot” paved the way for the Pride movement on the West Coast. The people who frequented these establishments were fed up with constant police harassment, which targeted the patrons of other bars as well. Among those bars was Johnny Frenchman’s at 18756 Malibu Road, and I wonder whether that might not be the setting for Duke’s poem. Regardless of the exact location, the poem also reminds me of Charles Gullans’s sequence of SoCal bar poems, collected in Letter from Los Angeles (1990). Gullans, who was a professor of English at UCLA decades before Nersessian joined the department, wrote with disarming candor about the experience of being an older gay man in the land of eternal youth. In one such poem, he considers speaking to some handsome young people but reconsiders:

Because it is my past; and they are locked
Within a future I can never reach.
What would I say to them or they to me?
I have no wisdom that they need as yet.
Though I am out of place by twenty years,
There is some pleasure in my sitting here,
Watching the young and beautiful at play.
Golden children, all the long afternoon,
Till diamond chips sift down the evening sky.

---

Malibu

Бесчисленных автомобилей
Сверкают, гаснут светляки;
Всю рыбу в море изловили
Измученные рыбаки.
Как ломтик спелой канталупы,
Пахуч и влажен Малибу
Дневных надежд живые трупы
В ночном покоятся гробу.
Немного смертному осталось:
Над кружкой пива белый снег,
Усталость, странная усталость
И монотонных волн разбег.
У бара двое — и в толкучке
Они толкуют про своё;
На них преузенькие брючки
И безупречное бельё.
Один поношенный изрядно,
По всяким признакам богат;
Другой — лет двадцати, громадный,
Борец иль в отпуску солдат.
Двадцатилетний хлещет виски,
Старик сосет Crème de Banane
Ползет в окно калифорнийский,
Глаза щекочущий туман.
«Ну, как дела?» — «Бывает лучше —
Работы нет, опять застой».
«Да, я читал. Good luck, голубчик!»
Они хватили по второй.
«Ах, кстати… Мне нужна пятёрка:
Хозяйке комнаты платёж…
Я жду посылки из Нью Иорка…»
Старик в юнца вгляделся зорко:
«Пятёрка — всё же деньги… что ж…»
Он расплатился . «Зря сидеть нам,
Кабацким воздухом дышать».
И под руку с двадцатилетним
Из бара вышел не спеша.

“All Ran South, If They Could Manage”: Alexander Voloshin on the Civil War in Ukraine

Kaiser Wilhelm II and Pavlo Skoropadskyi

As I continue work on Andrey Kurkov’s Samson and Nadezhda, which is set in Kyiv the spring of 1919, when the city was (briefly) under Bolshevik control, I try to imagine what it was like for Ukrainian citizens to see, in the span of a couple of years, no fewer than fourteen changes of government. That estimate is Mikhail Bulgakov’s, and it isn’t entirely inaccurate. One of Kurkov’s challenges in this work of historical fiction is to give readers enough particulars to sink into the era, but not so many that they would get bogged down. He rises to it with aplomb, naturally working in references to the Central Rada, as well as to its 1918 dissolution under German occupation and to the installation of the anti-Bolshevik former tsarist military officer Pavlo Skoropadskyi as Hetman of Ukraine by Kaiser Wilhelm II. We also learn about Symon Petliura, President of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, and the behavior of his Cossack troops.

Yet one can never have too much background. One of the liveliest, most colorful, and most humane literary treatments of this period in Ukrainian history — when long-suppressed dreams of independent nationhood were realized, however imperfectly, only to be suppressed again — can be found in Teffi’s Memories, translated by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler, Irina Steinberg, and Anne Marie Jackson. And another, equally lively but more concise treatment can be found in — you guessed it — Alexander Voloshin’s mock-epic On the Tracks and at Crossroads.  Here are three brief Chapters from the first part, in which the Ukrainian-born Voloshin chronicles his escape from the advancing Red Army.

Chapter Two

All ran South, if they could manage,
seeking peace. To our advantage,
Germans came just at that hour
and successfully seized power…

Sweetening the bitter pill,
that old thoughtful Kaiser Wil’,
a “hero” glorious and great,
established a “Ukrainian State.”

This corporal in a German crown
rewarded those whose minds were sound:
He gave the Rada the heave-ho
and put a Hetman on the throne…

Chapter Three

Every ancient church bell rings —
Germans look on from the wings
as, surrounded by elites,
Skoropadskyi takes his seat…

This operetta, plain to see,
had been composed in Germany…
Yet we, who feared the darkening tide
of bloody Red, swallowed our pride.
We had suffered so much pain
that we didn’t dare complain…

Besides, the Hetman, we all knew,
had been in the Retinue…
Sure, this matter had been “fixed” —
still, he hated communists.
We were hoping, as his guests,
we might finally get some rest…

Chapter Four

There was music in the air,
Ukraine feasted without care —
none of us could comprehend
that our feast would someday end.
Misery was drawing near
and in only half a year,
Bolsheviks would come and flank
both the Dnipro River’s banks…
We were desperate to forget…
But the worst was coming yet…
Everyone was acting brave…
Blue and yellow flags would wave…
We all danced and drank, had fun,
tried to speak our mova-tongue…

Conquering our nasty spleen,
that year we could sing — and mean —
words that we’d all come to cherish:
“Our Ukraine has not yet perished”…

---

Глава вторая

Всяк кто мог — на Юг стремился,
Там — порядок сохранился,
Ибо немцы в этот час —
Оккупировали нас…

Подсластить дабы лекарство, —
Здесь «Украинское Царство»
Основал войны «герой» —
Кайзер, Рекс, Вильгельм Второй …

Благомыслящим в награду, —
Разогнав «Державну Раду», —
Сам нам Гетмана избрал —
Коронованный Капрал …

Глава третья

Окруженный «сердюками»
И немецкими полками,
Под церквей старинных звон, —
Скоропадский сел на трон!…

Правда — не было секрета
В том, что это — оперетта
Made in Germany… Но мы
Так боялись Красной Тьмы,
Так за этот год устали,
Что и спорить уж не стали…

Да, к тому-же, — всяки знал:
Гетман — Свитский Генерал!
Пусть избрание — «не чисто»,
Все-же — враг он коммунистов,
И мечтали мы — «при нем, —
Бог поможет, — отдохнем!» …

Глава четвертая

«Украина» пировала,
И того не знали мы,
Что пируем — в дни чумы,
Что опять близка невзгода,
Что пройдет всего пол-года
И — вокруг Днепра-реки —
Сядут вновь большевики…
Мы забыть спешили горе…
По колена было море…
Все держали хвост трубой…
«Прапор» — желто-голубой —
На флагштоках развевался,
Всяк, по мере сил, старался —
Веселиться, пить, гулять
И — на «мове» размовлять…

Сбросив иго злого сплина, —
«Ще не вмерла Украина»
Пели, громко и вразброд, —
Киевляне в этот год …

Lev Mak Looks Back from Venice Beach

Photography by Carol M. Highsmith

Among the few — the very few — positive memories I have from the month that followed the launch of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the most heartwarming may be of an online event hosted by the Wende Museum and moderated by my good friend Sasha Razor. That event gave me the chance to meet and read with one of my Odessan (and Angeleno!) idols, the poet Lev Mak, whose life story I outlined here, with a couple of representative verses. As I mentioned in that earlier post, Lev had more than one run-in with the KGB in our native Odessa, and the last of these led to his exile — an exile that eventually landed him in Venice, California, where he lives in a house overlooking the ocean.

The lyric below, from 2004, sees Lev reflecting on his life in opposition to all oppressive forces. I love his identification with the surfers beneath his balcony, whom he sees not as blissful slackers but as ant-like warriors fighting against the odds — Davids who snidely take on the oceanic Goliath just as he had taken on the authorities back in Soviet Ukraine. Lev might have lost that last battle in Odessa, but as he says here, the loss opened up new possibilities. He’s not one to give up, and I have a feeling his sands will keep on flowing for a good long time.

From the Balcony

Six surfers run towards the shore
like ants bearing the wings of bees,
clipped cleanly from their mortal foe.

They lie atop these wings they bore
and row — how skillfully they tease
the water, trampling frenzied foam.

So I once teased the KGB.

That wave smacked me against the beach,
but in the end it helped me reach
America. It set me free.

I grow old in contempt of laws,
my life split evenly in two,
and watch the ocean rolling blue.

Sand trickles down my hourglass.

July 16, 2004

---

С балкона

Шесть серфингистов, сбегающих к пляжу,
Напомнили колонну муравьев,
Несущих крылья пчел, врагов своих.

Они ложатся на свою поклажу,
Гребут, и ярость пенистых валов
Дразнят внезапным попираньем их…

Так я дразнил когда-то КГБ.

Волна меня ударила о берег
И помогла открытию америк,
А с ней европ, и азий, и т.п.

Прожив полжизни там, полжизни тут,
Состарившись в презрении к закону,
Смотрю на Тихий океан с балкона.

Песочные часы мои текут.

16 июля 2004

“The Set Was Hot”: Alexander Voloshin on a Day in the Life of a Hollywood Extra

One of my favorite passages in Alexander Voloshin’s mock-epic of Russian Hollywood, On the Tracks and at Crossroads, describes a day in the life of a typical Russian extra — and one may be excused for assuming that this typical extra is none other than Voloshin himself. After all, he was a prolific contributor to filmic “atmosphere.” Then again, so were a great many of his countryman, like Theodore Lodi, whom I mentioned in an earlier post. But the intensity of Voloshin’s telling indicates to me that the particular scene described below was experienced first hand. Surely our poet was the face on the cutting room floor — as the cut seemed to smart something awful… Indeed, the documentary quality of this passage alone recommends it for preservation; Voloshin not only peppers it with piquant comments about the worsening political climate of the 1930s, but also records the actual number extras would call to reach Central Casting, “GArfield 3711.” I continue to marvel at Voloshin’s ability to register the political tensions of his day with humor without undermining their seriousness; in fact, the humor underscores their seriousness. The utter helplessness of our émigré extra in the face of a world spinning out of control adds a bitterly ironic and rather touching subtext to his struggle to pay his bills and his pathetic desire to see himself on film. Once we get to his joyous dreams at the end, we might remember the Fuhrer’s speech from the beginning. Speaking of preservation, it’s sad to reflect not only on how many scenes from old Hollywood films ended up in the rubbish bin, but also on how many films are lost… Just the other day I came across a rather expensive document on Ebay: a contract for a bit part signed by our poet. The film is 1928’s The Awakening, in which Voloshin apparently played a character named “Cronie.” Well, the film, if it exists, is slumbering in a dusty canister in some attic, but I’ll keep working to awaken readers to Cronie’s art.

I think I’ll lay out, if I may,
a common extra’s “working day”:
It’s seven-thirty — bored, depressed,
he eats his breakfast, then gets dressed,
but still has plenty time to kill…
Some coffee, then — he’ll drink his fill,
peruse a newspaper or two.
Here’s one more cutlet he can chew
while catching up on world affairs…
Look, “Lindbergh’s taken to the air”
and “Mrs. Simpson cracks a smile,”
“Blum weakens; publicly reviled,
Front populaire goes down the drain,”
while “Ethiopians, in vain,
have pled with Europe for fair play.”
The League of Nations? “Disarray.”
“Edward VIII is on the beach
in France.” “The Fuhrer gives a speech…”
And then he scans a different page:
“Arts — Cinema — News of the Stage.”
He reads the adverts, line by line,
for Lux soap, whiskey, gin, and wine,
and learns that Smith has cut the price
on his Vienna sausage — nice.

Such awful boredom… He sucks down
another cigarette, then frowns
and asks himself: “Where might I get
some money, pay off all this debt?”
Six fifteen for the gas alone;
four twenty for the telephone;
two eighty-five for power; soon
the rent is also coming due…
Oh, how he’d like to cry and shout,
“A Russian suffers – help him out!”

He washes… Slips in his false teeth…
Maybe a chat will bring relief?
Picks up the phone and dials a friend —
no answer on the other end:
“Figures… Always at work, that one…”
Nothing to do but sit and yawn.
Turns on the radio and sighs,
“Maybe somebody will drop by…”
His dog is groomed… His tailcoat’s brushed…
“Time certainly is in no rush…”

It’s twelve o’clock… And so at last he
decides to dial up Central Casting…
“GA” for “Garfield” (of all things),
Three… seven… one… one… And it rings.
“Hello” — then, with a stifled groan,
“You call back later.” Click. Dial tone.

Evening is here… No calls at all —
now it’s too late for them to call.
“How sad… Maybe tomorrow, then.”
At least he can go out again…

Frustrated, feeling quite defeated,
he dines, drinks wine, heads to the theater…
At the Apollo they’re now screening
the film on which, for four demeaning
days, he worked (at seven fifty
per) — oh, that was heavy lifting…
The set was hot, stuffy, and stale.
Swallowing lukewarm ginger ale,
he sat behind the bar each day,
landed one closeup… flew away.
Others had paychecks for three weeks!
Just think — some folks get all the breaks…

Alas, there is more pain to follow…
Watching the screen at the Apollo,
he finds he’s nowhere to be found!
They’ve cut him out of it, the clowns…
He didn’t count on such a blow —
they didn’t even let him know…
It’s all right there — just not the bar:
the “fist fight” and the “tearful star,”
the “scandal” and the “intrigue” too,
but for a hundred smackeroos
you wouldn’t spot a sign of him! 
Another victim of fate’s whim…
How rude! You suffer for your art
and in the end they scrap your part…

He trudges home… There, at the door,
a telegram awaits! What more
could he have hoped for! Not too wordy:
“At Fox in tailcoat seven-thirty,”
signed “Casting.” Yes, an urgent “call”!

He nearly dances up the wall!
A tender yearning warms his heart!
Indolence flees! Sad thoughts depart!
A “tailcoat” means fifteen a day!
A ten-day shoot? Then they will pay
one hundred fifty! That may climb
to two, if they run overtime!

He gets in bed, sets the alarm…
Sleep settles on him like a charm…
Tonight, joy sheds its radiant beams
over our Russian extra’s dreams!

---

Скажу вам тут-же — для примера, —
Чем дышит наша «атмосфера», —
Взгляните на «рабочий день»:
Семь тридцать… Утро… Скука… Лень
Вставать, есть «брекфест», одеваться…
Не знает он куда деваться,
А время нужно-бы убить…
И вот плетется кофе пить…
Жует вчерашние котлеты
И — просмотревши две газеты —
Он — в курсе иностранных дел!…
Узнал, что «Линдберг — улетел»,
Что «миссис Симпсон — улыбнулась»,
Что «сила Блюма — пошатнулась,
И, получив большой афронт, —
Притих теперь Народный Фронт»,
Что «тщетно просят у Европы
Суда и Правды — эфиопы»,
Что «Фюрер — шесть речей сказал»,
Что «в Лиге Наций был скандал»,
Что «Эдуард уехал в Ниццу»…
Потом он просмотрел страницу
«Театр, Искусство и Кино»…
Прочел рекламы: про вино,
Про мыло «Локс», про джин и виски…
Узнал, что «венские сосиски
Распродает со скидкой Смитт»…

Т-о-с-к-а… Печально он глядит,
Сосет от скуки папиросы
И лезут в голову вопросы:
«Где-б это денег подзанять,
Чтоб сразу все долги отдать?!»…
За телефон — четыре двадцать,
За газ (со старым) — шесть пятнадцать,
За свет — два восемьдесят пять,
И скоро нужно ожидать
Письма со счетом за квартиру!…
А, главное, не крикнешь миру,
Что здесь — мол — русская душа, —
Страдает мрачно — без гроша!…

Вздохнул… Помылся… Вставил зубы…
Гадает — «позвонить кому-бы?»…
Снимает трубку… Крутанул,
Но слышит только мерный гул —
«Нет дома… вечно на работе»…
И хрустнув челюстью в зевоте, —
Заводит «радио» и ждет, —
«Быть может — кто-нибудь зайдет»…
Почистил фрак … Помыл собаку…
«Как время тянется однако!»…

Двенадцать бьет… Ну — стало быть —
Пора уж в «кастинг» позвонить…
«Джи-Эй» для «Гарфилд» (ну и слово!),
Три… семь… о-д-и-н-н-а-д-ц-а-т-ь … готово!…
«Алло!»… И, погасивши стон, —
«Звоните позже!» — слышит он…

Подходит вечер… Не позвали…
И позовут теперь — едва-ли…
«Печально… Завтра, может быть…»
Теперь-же можно уходить, —
Все «кастинги» — уже закрыты…
Разочарованный, сердитый,
Он — пообедал, пьет вино
И собирается в «кино»…

В «Аполло», кстати, — та картина,
В которой он по семь с полтиной
«Играл» в толпе четыре дня,
Себя и всех кругом — кляня…
На «сэте» было жарко, давка, 
Сидел он в «баре» у прилавка,
Глотая теплый «джинджирэл»,
Попал в «клозап» и… улетел!…
Другие-ж были три недели!…
Подумать только — в самом деле —
Ну, как нарочно, как на зло, —
Ему тогда не повезло…

В «Аполло» — снова боль и мука…
В картины этой — вот так штука —
Он так себя и не нашел!…
Зачем-же он в театр пришел?!…
Такого он не ждал удара…
Все увидал он — кроме бара, —
Того, в котором так страдал!…
Он видел «драку» и «скандал»,
«Интриги», «слёзы героини»,
Но за сто долларов в картине —
Вы не смогли-б его найти!!…
Судьбы неведомы пути…
Вот хамство!… Mучиться, сниматься,
А в результате оказаться
В корзине для негодных лент!…
Ну показали-б на момент!…
Так нет — всё вырезали!… Звери!…

Идет домой … И там — у двери, —
Находит телеграмму он!…
Как радостный, пасхальный звон,
Звучит коротенькая строчка:
«В семь тридцать Фокс во фраке точка»!…
И подпись «Кастинг»!… Срочный «кол»!…

Как жизнерадостный козёл
Он сделал два-три пируэта!…
Душа надеждами согрета!…
Ушла тоска!… Исчезла лень!…
Ведь «фрак» — пятнадцать «дубов» в день!…
И коль деньков продержат с десять —
Сто пятьдесят!… извольте взвесить!…
А с «овертаймами» (как знать!)
И двести может набежать!…

Завел будильник… Спать ложится…
Забыто горе… Сладко спится…
И светлой радости полны
Сегодня русской «экстры» сны!…

“Which One is Cain and Which is Abel?”: The Civil War in Andrey Kurkov’s Latest Novel and Varvara Malakhieva-Mirovich’s Poems

Varvara Malakhieva-Mirovich

As Russia’s war on Ukraine grinds on, I find myself immersed in an earlier conflict that raged over the same terrain. Last month I broke ground on my latest translation project, the first in a series of historical crime novels by Andrey Kurkov, titled Samson and Nadezhda. Set in Kyiv in the spring of 1919, in the midst of the bloody Civil War, which saw a half dozen regimes rise and fall in the span of a couple of years, the novel follows the adventures of Samson, a young electrical engineer turned police investigator, and his sturdy, no-nonsense love interest, Nadezhda. Andrey doesn’t shy away from the realities of the era, with its kidnappings, murders, black markets, crooked schemes, and even cannibalism, yet he leavens them, as usual, with a dose of light surrealism and humor. The series resonates with echoes of, if not outright allusions to, the works of authors who witnessed the Civil War in Ukraine firsthand — namely, Mikhail Bulgakov and Isaac Babel. And as it happens, a new selection of my versions of Babel’s stories, Of Sunshine and Bedbugs, was just published last week by Pushkin Press.

Andrey has based Samson’s cases, however, not on incidents out of literature but on the actual, often hair-raising, archives of the Cheka and other crime enforcement agencies in Kyiv. I’m greatly enjoying the challenge of finding ways to introduce the period details to Anglophone readers — from street names to professions to the various currencies then in circulation — without confusing the narrative. But I’m also reading around the book, looking to prose and poems from 1917-1920 that can help conjure up the mood of the time.

One remarkable discovery I made in my search for mood-setting material is a sequence by the Kyiv-born poet Varvara Malakhieva-Mirovich (1869-1954), written in Rostov in 1919. Malakhieva-Mirovich’s name is hardly known. She published only a single collection in her lifetime, in 1923, and spent the rest of her life writing with no hope of publication. This allowed her to remain honest to her vision, which had been shaped by Symbolism, theosophy, and the writings of her old friend from Kyiv, the émigré religious philosopher Lev Shestov (1866-1938). Many of the poems she wrote in her mature period reflect these metaphysical leanings, but some, like the sequence from 1919, are shatteringly concrete, almost Beckettian. Below are two lyrics from the sequence that will hang over my work on Samson and Nadezhda. Those who read Russian can find more in a collection published in 2013.

An old woman died queuing for bread.
The queue went on and on.
She sat down on the iced-over road.
A cannon sounded at dawn.
While all others scurried away,
she just sat there, wide-eyed, all day.

* * *

Daniel is with the Reds.
Ivan is with the Whites.
The brothers’ regiments fight.
They slash each other’s faces with their sabers —
embrace and fall face down onto a mound…
Which one is Cain and which is Abel?
The Lord will sort them out…
Now they lie buried side by side.
Death has left them pacified.

1919
Rostov

---

В череду умерла старушка.
Простояла всю ночь в череду,
Не дождалась хлеба и села.
На рассвете грянула пушка.
Разбежались все, а она – на льду,
Как живая до полдня сидела.

* * *

В кавалерии красной Данила.
В кавалерии белой Иван.
Брат на брата с полками идет.
Бились шашками, лица друг другу рубили…
Обнялись и свалились ничком на курган…
Кто тут Каин, кто Авель –
Господь разберет…
Схоронили их рядом в могиле одной,
Усмирила ты, Смерть, их своей тишиной.

1919
Ростов

“What Route Is Safe These Days?”: Alexander Voloshin Advises Refugees of All Eras

Refugees during the Russian Civil War, 1919

Every day since February 24 I’ve given thought to what the Russophone émigré poets I translate would have made of Russia’s indefensible, barbaric invasion of Ukraine. How would the Angeleno exiles who had been born on the territory of Ukraine and fought against the Bolsheviks to defend what they regarded as their country, Russia, identify themselves today? I keep going back to Alexander Voloshin, author of On the Tracks and at Crossroads, the mock epic of Russian Hollywood (more here, and here), to look for clues. There is no question that he thought of himself as Russian, but he writes with such warmth of his life in Ananiv and of Ukrainian folkways that I have to wonder: would he, like so many Russian-speakers in Ukraine today, draw a firm line and declare himself Ukrainian? I suspect he might, but I can’t be sure. What I am sure of, however, is that the plight of Ukrainian refugees would remind him of his own experiences in the 1910s and ’20s. He would, I venture, see these refugees as his true “compatriots” — not only because they come from the geographic region he himself called home, but also because they have been made stateless by a senseless war. My evidence? The final chapter of On the Tracks, which appears to have been written just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the US’s entry into the Second World War. With his usual blend of pathos and humor, Voloshin contemplates the coming displacement of his fellow Russophone exiles, who have already been robbed of all their earthly possessions once. This earlier brush with the Bolsheviks, he claims with tongue in cheek, gives them a leg up on other exiles-to-be — they know just what to do: pick up sticks and get moving. Besides, he adds — as a kind of Marie Kondo avant la lettre — who needs all those beloved possessions? They only weigh you down. Voloshin’s ironic depiction of what it means to be “liberated” certainly suggests that he would laugh ruefully at the Russian propaganda of today.

---

Today the United States of America has declared war
on Japan, which treacherously attacked Pearl Harbor.
— Newspaper headlines in 1941
The wind returneth again according to his circuits…
— Ecclesiastes

Nothing in life is new, or lasts…
Beginnings fade into the past,
ends weave themselves into beginnings…
There — crowns go flying off and spinning
into the void and thrones are razed;
here — laws are trampled and some crazed
loony takes on the World entire!
War, with its bloody wind and fire,
again has set the globe aglow…
One thinks: “There’s simply no salvation!”
And wonders: “Where am I to go?
What route is safe these days? What station?”

Well, we have had these thoughts before,
those of us born in Russian lands.
Even our children understand.
We well remember that long war,
and how we languished, how we bled,
how our whole families then fled,
leaving our homes for evermore…

…

There we had been the slaves of things —
slaves of our pots for cabbage soup,
our vodka glasses, favorite cups,
ladles and skimmers, frying pans…

…

We had all dreamt of this or that,
sought things and bought them, piece by piece.
Our faces flushed and dripping sweat,
we kept acquiring without cease!
We were so confident, so proud,
and unafraid to say out loud:
“My gramophone, my samovar,
My cigarette case, my cigar,
My painting in my private home,
My chair and table in my room!”

…

Our liberation finally came
in ’17, that fateful hour,
when — what misfortune, what a shame —
the Bolsheviks rose up, seized power…
And we immediately lost
our tailcoats, pianos, family homes…
In ’21, the winter frost
met us abroad, and there we roamed…
To left and right, we spread in waves,
a flood of “liberated slaves”!

…

For five long years, we knocked around…
Our souls grew weary in those days.
But then we finally settled down,
and — yes — went back to our old ways…

…

Ladies again pursue their whims:
they want fine china, by the dozen,
and hats and dresses and perfumes…
Their closets overflow with clothes and
all sorts of rubbish, of no use…
One hears the same old conversations:
she craves a shawl for all occasions;
he went and bought himself a coat;
these built a farmhouse on some land,
while those, a Russian restaurant…

Their recent wounds now hurt no more…
Their bitter losses? All forgotten…
It is as if an open door
has shown them Eden’s verdant garden;
as if they’d never tasted woe —
a taste, what’s more, they’ll never know!
Yes, nothing troubles them at all;
they don’t expect a bloody squall.
For them, the sky is purest blue —
yet they have been enslaved anew:
they’re drowning in the things they own,
are literally overgrown!

Alas! The bloody god of war —
cruel-hearted Mars — again has stirred,
straightened his shoulders, and once more
pulled out and brandished his broad sword!

The diplomats have fallen silent;
weapons are speaking in their stead…
The earth’s aflame and turning red.
A “time of losses” has begun —
for us, of course, the second one.

The circle’s closed… Our wounds are aching…
Well, get your suitcases, start making
preparations — and then wait…
Don’t think, don’t guess — it’s far too late.
No sense in sounding the alarm…

If we must go, then let us go.
We know the drill — we’ll hit the road.
We’re Russians — we won’t come to harm!

---

Сегодня С. А. С. Ш. объявили войну Японии,
предательски напавшей на Перл Гарбор!
Заголовок газет 1941-го года.
Возвращается ветер на круги своя…
Экклезиаст

Все в жизни тлен и «все бывало»…
Концы вплетаются в начала,
Начала в новые концы…
Там — кувырком летят венцы
И рушатся дворцы и троны,
Здесь — кто-то топчет в грязь законы
И хочет Мир завоевать!..
Кровавый шквал войны – опять
Безумьем охватил Планету…
Приходит мысль: «Спасенья нету!»…
Встает вопрос: «Куда уйти?!..
Где безопасные пути?!!»…

Ну, что-ж, не новы мысли эти, —
Отцы то помнят, да и дети —
Те, что в России родились, —
Как мы боролись, как дрались,
Как мы томились, как страдали,
Как всей семьей потом бежали,
Покинув Родину навек…

…

Там были мы — рабы вещей!
Рабы горшков для варки щей,
Рабы «привычной» рюмки водки,
Кастрюль, шумовок, сковородки…

…

Мы все — о том, о сем мечтали,
Искали что-то, покупали,
И — в поте тела и лица —
Приобретали без конца!..
Самоуверенными были
И о вещах мы говорили:
«Мой граммофон, мой портсигар,
Мой книжный шкап, мой самовар,
Мой особняк, моя картина,
Мой стол, мой стул, моя перина!»

…

Освобождения начало
Пришло в «семнадцатом году»,
Когда — России на беду —
Большевики у власти стали…
В тот год — мы сразу потеряли
Рояли, фраки и дома…
А «двадцать первого» зима
Нас повстречала за границей…
Тянулись всюду вереницей
«Освобожденные Рабы»!..

…

Лет пять по свету нас мотало…
Потом душа бродить устала,
Осели… Занялись трудом…
И что-ж?…

…

Проснулись милых дам капризы, —
Их снова тянет на сервизы,
На шляпки, платья и духи…
Опять в «кладовках» чепухи
И хлама накопились горы…
И, снова, те-же разговоры:
Та — хочет заказать манто,
Тот — приобрел себе пальто,
Те — дом и фарму покупают,
А эти — скоро открывают
Шикарный русский ресторан…

Забыта боль недавних ран…
Забыты горкие потери, —
Как будто-бы открылись двери
В Эдема пышные сады…
Как будто не было беды,
Да и в грядущем быть не может!..
Ничто их больше не тревожит,
Не ждут они кровавых бурь,
Для них — чиста небес лазурь,
Они опять «рабами» стали,
Вещами вновь пообрастали
Буквально — с головы до ног!..

Увы!.. Войны кровавый бог —
Жестокосердый Марс — проснулся…
Расправил плечи… Потянулся
И вытащил широкий меч!..

У молкла дипломатов речь…
Пожары Землю озарили, —
Орудия заговорили…
И приближается теперь
Вторично к нам — «пора потерь»!..

Замкнулся круг… Заныли раны…
Что-ж — приготовим чемоданы,
Мешки, и будем скромно ждать…
Не стоит думать, да гадать, —
Нет смысла — бить в тоске тревогу…

А, коль в дорогу, — так в дорогу!..
Идти придется… Что-ж — пойдем!..
Мы — Русские!.. Не пропадем!..