Stalin by Osip Mandelshtam

We live, not sensing the country beneath us,

Our voices unheard away in about ten paces,

But where there is breath for half a conversation—

There, the Kremlin highlander is named mention

His thick fingers are fat like grave worms,

And his words, like pood-weights, strike core.

His cockroach whiskers laugh formidably terrible,

And his boot-tops gleam like death scythe blade.

Around him, a rabble of scrawny-necked chieftains,

He plays joifuly.  with the services of half-humans.

Some whistle, some meow, some whimper,

He alone comminate and pokes his finger.

He hammers out huddle of  decrees like horseshoes—

Striking the forehead, the groin, the eye. the brows

For him, is a delight, every decimation.

He has the broad chest of the Ossetian.

1933

Soon the poet vanished