Youth has a mass of occupations.

We hammer grammar into the thickest skulls.

But I

was expelled from the fifth class.

Then they began to shove me into Moscow prisons.

In your

cosy

little apartment world,

curly-headed lyricists sprout in bedrooms.

What do you find in these lapdog lyricists?!

As for me,

I learned

about love

in Butyrki.

Does nostalgia for the Bois de Boulogne mean anything?!

Or to gaze at the sea and sigh?!

In the “Funeral Parlor,”

I

fell in love

with the keyhole of Cell 103.

Staring at the daily sun,

people ask:

“How much do they cost, these little sunbeams?”

But I

for a yellow patch

of light jumping on the wall

would then have given everything in the world.