Work in blank wall eyeglasses
squats over tomorrow's lessons
Eager to make the truths of work self-evident,
secret corners of the sun-struck streets
are full of shady stories, squalid lairs
where a solitary shot rings out! ...No, only groans
that still draw from the dreamer all intelligence
of doing day-to-day what day must do.
He sucks dry-mouthed, but sucks sweet honey,
and with this venom as his pilgrim staff
sets off to find the drowsy shore of dreams.
Immediately the holy blaze of fire,
the hammer beating on the soft red iron,
everything vanishes. The armour plate of fantasy
seals up a sober mind.
Upon these plains grow only chains,
but he hears nothing now, not voices in the street
not evening, enchanting, flowers of words wasted
yesterday, nor voices prophesying vanities,
the slow sea-sound of daily cares.
Forgotten, all of it. Work vanishes,
in thought-smoke, in familiar favourite dreams...
But this captive in iron chains of smoke
is caught in the cloud of his desires
and down his sleepy road he goes
to paradise, the smokey rites of paradise,
where people vanish. Adam is alone.
It's almost day. Dawn blisters in a crack of night
and? A slave again. He goes to work.
But that same shore still beckons,
and in debts of iron chains, he seems
a boat adrift, on some night-smoke Volga.
- Velimir Khlebnikov (trans. by P. Schmidt)
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