Solar batteries and
the great poets can
work directly off the sun;
while other batteries
and smaller poets need
continual recharging:
charging up with fame,
or vodka, or perhaps
they get recharging from
other poets' usage.
by Борис Абрамович Слуцкий
(Boris Abramovich Slutsky)
(19??)
translated by Elaine Feinstein
Beneath is the original Russian Cyrillic version of the poem (Honestly the translation above, though definitely based on the poem below, seem like it’s for a completely different poem with a similar theme but they share the name and I can find no alternatives that share the title!)
Солнечные Батареи
Физики поднаторели —
выполнили программу,
солнечные батареи
от солнца работают прямо.
А Гезиод задолго
до современной науки
только от солнца работал,
а также мы, его внуки.
Солнце, вёдро, счастье —
вот источники тока,
питающие все чаще
поэтов нашего толка.
Но мы и от гнева — можем,
и от печали — будем.
И все-таки книги вложим
в походные сумки людям.
Мы — от льгот и от тягот
вдоль вселенной несемся,
а батареи могут
только от солнца.
Additional information: I came across the following, that I’ve roughly translated from Russian, which is quite interesting about one of his other poems and a repeated theme he used.
“Physicists and Lyrics” ( 1959 ) – one of the most famous poems by Boris Slutsky .
According to the memoirs of Boris Slutsky, the poem was written in Tarusa inspired by the discussion of cybernetics theory by Igor Poletaev and Alexei Lyapunov with the writer Ilya Erenburg , which unfolded on the pages of the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. The poem, where Slutsky sided with the opponents of Ehrenburg, was published in Literaturnaya Gazeta in the issue of October 13, 1959.
“Physicists and Lyrics” is one of the most famous poems by Slutsky. Its name has become a ‘winged expression’ [i.e what Russian like to refer to their ‘idioms’ as] and is used to refer to the division of “people of science and people of art”.
As Slutsky recalled, Erenburg reacted to the poem “with restrained perplexity,” and the poet Mikhail Dudin , when he was told that the poem was humorous, replied: “We do not understand jokes”. The motive of “physicists” sounded in Slutsky’s poetry both earlier and later (“They gave us black bread on cards …”, “Physicists and people”, “Solar batteries”, “Lyrics and physicists”), and the author’s attitude was not so clear. In a later poem, “Lyrics and Physics,” Slutsky refuses to acknowledge the victory of “physicists”.
https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Физикиилирики_(стихотворение)
Rambling At The Bridge Head 