Supplement to Collection "Nameless Day" (Dopolnenie k Sborniku "Bezymyannyi Den' "), Moscow, 1977 (this self-made Collection of 50 poems deleted by censorship from the book "Nameless Day" was distributed in Samizdat in hundreds of copies):

* * *

Diaspora. The scattering.
The howl of a strange land's wind.
The crack in a strange land's soil.
Which God made it our precept
To make other nations' troubles our own
And to live as guests of mankind
Far from our native land?
But now these sleepy rivers
Are dearer to me than my "native" streams.
And if I suffer insults,
My pain has nothing to do with the land of David.
Some from Rostov, some from Toulon,
We are the crowds of Babylon,
Alien, many-faced,
Long speaking different languages.
There is no end to our pilgrimage.
Only extermination brought us together
Into a long trail of smoke.
But winds blow eternally,
All smoke scattering.

          1976

Translated by Anthony Astrachan and Regina Kazakova

          In Russian
          Read by the Author