Pavel Antokolsky

I’m sure, art doesn’t wait for the long invitation
To take whole work under pressure, 
It owns the people’s nomadic attention,
Just catching its aims through eyelashes. 

And then – decorated in rough, vulgar order,              
The world fells in stress and elation.
I’m old, but, by God, art’s essentially older,
And I favor such situation.

I looked at the worlds in the frames, old and lone, 
In cells of the galleries, ancient.
I harked to guitars’ lamentations and moans, 
Defying the Philistines’ patience.

The rhyme, dance and song, I do know, for sure,
Is valued by critics so dreary.  
But a maiden just dance on a scene, small and poor,
And, suddenly, she is a fairy.

She’s stretching her arms, so swarthy and precious,
Unique in the world and the fiction.
And all macro-cosmos of torture and pleasure   
I know in its first edition.          


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, December, 2000