Author's website Alexander Korotko

TOWARDS THE DAWN

Comfortless country. In the equation and only
systems. In every gesture: “I myself”. Songs
with faces of heroes. Extramarital son of the wind
in the field lived as a homeless Marx. Our 
common enemy didn’t nap. So, we ate 
a peck of salt, whether foolish, or just so. Father
Frost collected us from booze to booze. Everybody 
knew about a red nose, and lived by the calendar.
And when the Chime with battle reimbursed New 
Year’s Day, we were waiting for a new dawn. “Ogonek”
was teasing geese. Congress put the question squarely, and
everyone shouted over the country that it ruled us 
not correctly, and it’s time to change the Primer.

 

 

 

PLYASOVAYA

Embraces were being handed out. A rain mowed down by the wind was dying. November 
was seeing off the autumn wearing a modest dress. A new flame was 
out of the tiles. The Commissioners were gathering the warmth of the careless stars
bit by bit from the table. Better times were being waited for. Executioners were
telling fortunes over a promised glory. And sunrises got on not left but right leg
just for us to live better. From a happy childhood and a bloody banner 
we inherited the dust of forgotten names. This world long-liver,
the author of our betrayals, proposed us to forget them and for this in exchange
took for us a heap of new events in captivity from the forthcoming one.
Masters’ hands amused a little, and on the canvas, off-white out of boredom, colors
of the earth laid, inaccessible to the eye and heart, – those that we couldn’t save 
for ourselves. Homeless songs, stooping, the oppression of expectations was hard,
just started up for a moment and went away, unlikely someone will find them 
right now. Cities offended the passers. Wastelands of loneliness were waiting
for guests. Carrion-crows pecked the luck. Unlike itself, dream-scatterbrain 
was roaming. Nights rouged the parting, nothing left from the past words,
we were living the science of tired life, our only one sweet draught.

 

 

 

EQUALITY

One meter, in a hat acock, scored a goat with
a hangover. In the cradle of revolution was languishing
a proud lilac. On the hearth Emelja was sitting,
guarding yesterday. Desdemona was stifled for nothing.
A dawn of prostitution was rising over the country.
Everybody, who wasn’t lazy, committed a sin. The closest
to the law were those who went off the top of head.
The Party cell was dismissed. But the instinct was forgotten.
And exactly then everybody took to the bottle.
Only Lenin didn’t drink.