The night is dark.
There is a moon.
She is, of course, not alone,
And I am absolutely not lonely,
And just now – the bell rings.
I hear a prearranged knock on the door,
jump up, grasp the handshake,
put on a raincoat,
and we go out
almost
in a downpour of rain.
We go out,
and, it is to be supposed,
we are going to overthrow someone.
by Yury Galanskov
1955 (?)
translated by Albert C. Todd
Ночь темна
Ночь темна.
Луна.
Она, конечно, не одна.
И я совсем не одинок,
вот-вот — и прозвенит звонок.
Услышу в дверь условный стук,
вскочу, схвачу пожатье рук,
надену плащ,
и мы уйдем
почти
под проливным дождем.
Уйдем,
и надо полагать —
идем кого-то низвергать.
Additional information: Ю́рий Тимофе́евич Галанско́в (Yuri Timofeyevich Galanskov); 19 June 1939 – 4 November 1972) was a Russian poet, historian, human rights activist and dissident. For his political activities, such as founding and editing samizdat almanac Phoenix, he was incarcerated in prisons, camps and forced treatment psychiatric hospitals (Psikhushkas). He died in a labor camp.
Galanskov’s father was a common worker. He studied briefly at Moscow University but was expelled in his second semester for “the independence of his views.” In 1961, as one of the first human rights activists, he helped found the underground journal Feniks (Phoenix), where, in the first number, his own poetry first appeared. The second number, Feniks 66, he published on his own. He was arrested in 1967 and sentenced with Aleksandr Ginzburg to seven years in a severe-regimen camp for assisting in the production of the White Book about the trial of Andrey Sinyavsky and Yuly Daniel. Beginning in 1969 he was in and out of prison hospitals for treatment of ulcers. He died tragically at the martyr’s age of thrity-three from a blood infection following an ulcer operation.
Galanskov was an unusually courageous, uncompromising enemy of the violence, vulgarity, and hypocrisy of the Soviet system; none of his poetry or essays was ever published in the official Soviet press during his lifetime.
Biographical information about Galanskov, p.954, ‘Twentieth Century Russian Poetry’ (1993), compiled by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (ed. Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward) , published by Fourth Estate Limited by arrangement with Doubleday of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc. (transcribed as found in the original text).
Rambling At The Bridge Head 