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'Here we're all drunkards and whores,'

by

Here We're All Drunkards and Whores (1913) opens with one of the most famous first lines in Russian poetry, painting a Bohemian St. Petersburg cafe scene that pulses with self-destructive beauty. "On the walls, birds and flowers / Pine for the clouds and air."

Here we're all drunkards and whores,
Joylessly stuck together!
On the walls, birds and flowers
Pine for the clouds and air.

The smoke from your black pipe
Makes strange vapours rise.
The skirt I wear is tight,
Revealing my slim thighs.

Windows tightly closed:
Who's there, frost or thunder?
Your eyes, are they those
Of some cautious cat, I wonder?

O, my heart how you yearn!
Is it for death you wait?
Or that girl, dancing there,
For hell to be her sure fate?

Crowd Score: 6.9

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