Our tools are primitive
and simple:
a rouble’s worth of paper,
a hurrying pencil,
we need no more
to build a castle –
high in the air –
above the world’s bustle.
Dante needed nothing else
to build gates
into that Hell hole
founded on ice.
by Варлам Тихонович Шаламов (Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov)
(1954)
translated by Robert Chandler
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