The Russian tourist watches a striptease by Andrey Boznesenski

In the revue

A woman strips, playing the fool nice.

I weep a few,

Or perhaps it is the spotlights blinding my eyes.

She takes off her shawl,  takes off her scarf,

The tinsel large.

As if peeling the rind soft

From an orange.

The dance is nightmare:

The hall is filled with bald heads and whistles;

Like leeches, the eyes of the drunkards

Have grown engorged bliss.

I curse now,

O Universe, your awry scale—

A Martian glow

Upon the bridges steel rail

I curse essential

Marveling and amazed—

A torrential

woman Dances to the jazz.

"Are you America portrait?”, -

I will ask like an idiot.

She'll sit down, a cigarette

rub iouнt.

"Boy," she’ll say bikini,-

"Oh, what an accent you have!

Order me a Martini—

And an Absinthe above !”