Some things succeed, and some things fail;
everything’s nonsense that passes away…
But even so this reddish-brown grass
which grows by a gate in the fence will last.
… If Russian speech has the power to go
back to the land where the Neva flows –
from Paris I send these muddled words,
though even to me they sound absurd.
by Георгий Владимирович Иванов (Georgii Vladimirovich Ivanov)
(1950)
by Stephen Capus
