by Michael Scherbakov
translated by Yury Nesterenko

What a nightmare: to live your whole life in vain,
to be an aphis, nothing more,
However, judging by your glasses, to seem a humanist by sight,
all time to spin around your axis, but to know
nor azimuth nor any thing,
and, even if you guess the orbit, to move across it anyway;

to look around and drop your eyes, in order not
to see details and so not to harden into stone...
Oh, stinking park! Oh, sabre-toothed town! Oh,
nauseating coastland... nasty, nasty, foul horizon!

And now - the sands. A varan can attack you here,
you can be caught by a simoom,
you want to run away from here - certainly, if you are alone.
And what if not? With regiment at your command?
Two? Three? Imagine for a while:
three thousand menfolk, and each one’s thinking of nothing but himself.

Ecclesiast would lose his mind, and Hercules -
his legendary power, but you may not even shake.
Oh, that fanaticism!  Oh, poor daily exploit!
Oh, forlorn exhaustion... shooting, shooting, falling short.

But much more foul, if suddenly in spite of all
the real Cup of Holy Grail
in search of eyes to show itself to, would choose not anyone's but yours.
Don't waste your time! Here is the brush, create and paint.
Moreover, you are just Matisse,
or even Picasso of any period - either pink or blue.

Oh look - you did it! Finished, ravished, got your prize,
and made your bows. But what is next? The public went away.
The grail is gone. Again the dark and void around,
You again are not important, Picasso or not.

And further - stop. Excuse me, further is the wall.
A firewall with a single hole,
in which there is a mason now, who is a plasterer besides.
And, row by row, he puts his bricks on fresh cement
inside the gap, and walls it up,
removing this last way to go, gaily, as if he says to you:

"Hey you, don't whine! It is not very bad - your island.
Local population is not idle, including you.
Parterre is shady, town's decorum is refined,
the coastland is effulgent... Ziegel, Ziegel... Abgemacht..."

Original song (mp3)

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