Each has his mouth around a neighbor’s leg.
Outside, the steppe glows. The summer evening is easy.
I am riding north on a dead train, to the city
Where the dead sun gleams like ice.
My way is calm. My passions are past.
I don’t know. Shall mother meet me? Shake my hand?
I have heard my city is now an impassive friar,
Mans the candle table and makes low bows.
They also say the ships are a-coming in,
A-coming in now into the unpeopled city
With foreign wines and silk in the hold.
They ply the dead one with drink. Then they dress it in silk.
Hey, quicken, stoker, hurry to the north!
The night is clear tonight. How like a corpse it smells!
We are dead, Ivan, the clover is over us.
The German colonist stirs on the threshing floor.
1921–1922