The Stalin Epigram by Osip Mandelstam, translator Benjamin Rozonoyer (September 2026)

 The Stalin Epigram, Osip Mandelstam

We subsist, without sensing beneath us the state,
Our exchanges inaudible ten feet away;
If we ever scrape up a half-banter,
We’ll allude to the Kremlin highlander.
His fat fingers are pinguid like corpulent worms,
And his words like to pood-weighing dumbbells are firm,
His cockroach’s mustachios titter,
And the calves of his leather boots glitter.
 
There surrounds him a canaille of captains, neck thin,
He toys with obsequiousness of half-men:
Some are whistling, some meowing, some sobbing,
He alone does the braying and prodding.
Like a horseshoe he smithies decrees by-the-bye —
To the groin, or the skull, or the brow, or the eye.
Executions — as berries refreshing,
And broad chest of a thickset Ossetian.