Streeptise by Andre Voznesensky

Soviet man watches ctreeptise on Hudson

In a revue thing 

A dancer undresses, fooling around...

Am I crying?

Or are the spotligts cutting my eyes down?

She tears off her scarf, tears off her shawl, tinsel.

Like she  peeling an orange itself.

And in her eyes there is such melancholy as in birds.

This strange dance is “Striptease” called.

The dance is terrible. In the bar there are bald spots and whistling,

Like leeches, the eyes of drunkards are bloodshot instead 

This red-haired one, as if covered in yolk phlegm 

He obsilates as if  a pneumatic hammer  on legs.

That one, like a bug - apoplectic and horror

The saxophone howls like the apocalypse more!

I curse now  your scale now, Universe!

Martian radiance on the bridges!

I curse, adoring and marveling in same times:

A downy woman dances to that jazz!..

"Are you America?" - I will ask, like an idiot.

She will sit down and roll out a cigarette.

“Boy,” she will say, “what you have such an accent!

Order, please me a martini, absinthe at moment”.