Velimir Khlebnikov

 

Genghis Khan me, you midnight plantation!..

Genghis Khan me, you midnight plantation!
Dark blue birch trees, sound in my ear!
Zarathuse me, you twilight horizons!
Mozarticulate me, dark-blue sky!
Goya, gloaming, glooming!
Rops, you midnight clouds!
But the storm of smiles vanishes
in cackling and the shock of claws
and leaves me to outface the hangman,
to brave the stillness of the night.
I summoned up you barefaced insolents,
from rivers made the drowned girls rise.
"Rosemary, stronger than remembrance!"
I shouted to the sails of night.
Again earth's axis splashes round,
brings on the overwhelming evening.
I dreamed I saw a salmon-girl
beneath a midnight waterfall.
Let storms turn pines to Mamai-monsters
beneath the Batu-beating clouds;
words come on, like Cains of silences,
and all these sacred speeches die.
And to stone entertainment with heavy footfall
comes heaven-blue Hasdrubal, henchmen and all