Translation p. 6

“Say, Blaise, are we really a long way from Montmartre?”

Of course we are, stop bothering me, you know we are, a long way
An overheated madness bellows in the locomotive
Plague and cholera rise like burning embers around us
We disappear right into a tunnel of war
Hunger, that whore, clutches the clouds scattered across the sky and
   craps on the battlefield piles of stinking corpses
Do what it does, do your job . . .

“Say, Blaise, are we really a long way from Montmartre?”

Yes, we are, we are
All the scapegoats have swollen up and collapsed in this desert
Listen to the cowbells of this mangy troop
Tomsk Chelyabinsk Kansk Ob’ Tayshet Verkne-Udinsk Kurgan Samara
   Penza-Tulun
Death in Manchuria
Is where we get off is our last stop
This trip is terrible
Yesterday morning
Ivan Ulitch’s hair turned white
And Kolia Nikolai Ivanovitch has been biting his fingers for two
   weeks . . .
Do what Death and Famine do, do your job
It costs one hundred sous—in Trans-Siberian that’s one hundred rubles
Fire up the seats and blush under the table
The devil is at the keyboard
His knotty fingers thrill all the women
Instinct
OK gals
Do your job
Until we get to Harbin . . .

“Say, Blaise, are we really a long way from Montmartre?”

No, hey . . . Stop bothering me . . . Leave me alone
Your pelvis sticks out
Your belly’s sour and you have the clap
The only thing Paris laid in your lap
And there’s a little soul . . . because you’re unhappy
I feel sorry for you come here to my heart
The wheels are windmills in the land of Cockaigne
And the windmills are crutches a beggar whirls over his head
We are the amputees of space
We move on our four wounds
Our wings have been clipped
The wings of our seven sins
And the trains are all the devil’s toys
Chicken coop
The modern world
Speed is of no use
The modern world
The distances are too far away
And at the end of a trip it’s horrible to be a man with a woman . . .

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