Song

For Mikhail Bakhmetiev

On the green, in the clearing,
in the middle of the street,
walk Steshas, walk Glanyas,
ruddy wild hens.

Like roosters Vankas,
Stepkas strut in pomp,
their snub-nosed ensnaring faces
so sweetly skinned.

Aiming a clumsy claw
to paw a boob,
grins the roly-poly
cripple Mitka.

The redhead on the squeezebox jerks the bellows,
the wenches squawk in chorus,
setting off on a ditty about Yermoshka.
The wheat is getting high.

The poem is translated from Andrei Platonov’s Blue Depths, part three. And the drawing was done by Edward Frederick Ertz (1862-1954), a relative who was an artist of the Romantic era, the period which influenced young Platonov’s poetry.

Location: Voronezh, Voronezh Oblast, Russia

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