Электрический Пёс [Elektricheskiy Pes] [English translation]

The long-term memory is worse than a syphilis,

Especially in a circle of friends.

And such a bacchanalia of reminiscence

Is way too much of a cleanse.

And the getting old youth1 in his search for new kicks,

With an ultimate question is staring around,

He pours some wine; and from somewhere close

With the gunner’s attention keeps staring the electrical hound.2

We stand on a watch in the smoke-filled kitchen,

In hats out of feathers and in boxers from lead.

If someone succumbed to suffocating conditions,

Our platoon didn't notice their missing or dead3.

The unity of people is a proof of friendship

Or a sign of fear to walk straight and bold.

And above the kitchen-turned-castle a banner will flutter,4

Despite looking like speedos that are reeking with mold.

And everyone says that their method is better

To propel into motion the radiant ash.

So poets get high from someone else’s numbers,

And guitarists are in love with their memory cache.

It's always their buddies whom they are calling

To debate how beautiful is their circle indeed.

This hound keeps gnawing into the walling

In his eternal quest for the loving hands that he needs.

But ladies – those, who could be like good sisters,

Choose to paint their nails with venom in zeal,

They say that they're seeing whores in all figures,

But truth to be told, it's only rivals they see.

And after such empathy demonstrations,

I’m starting to worry for my temper and mind.

But this hound is not free of self-contradictions:

He is in love with these women,

And from his point of view, he is right.

That’s because others do not inspire

Neither life, neither death, nor to write a few lines at least.

And one gazes on the West with amusement,

While the second one stares with delight on the East.

But for a decade everyone is learning their parts,

Roles that deserve to disappear in time.

Meanwhile, this hound is laughing at us:

He is not occupied with the questions of why and whom to become.

This song has no beginning and no conclusion,

But it has an epigraph, several lines:

We grew up in a field of such tremendous tension,

Where only flashes would mark a burned-out device.

With the deductive reasoning, this hound is unthinkable –

But he lives, in a way unimaginable for the wise men like us5.

And my friends will ask: "Whom this song is about?"

And in the mystic voice, I would say: "Oh, I wish I had rights to discuss."6

1. A quote from the poem Double by Alexander Block2. Probably a ref. to the Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury3. A quote from the poem Grenada by Mikhail Svetlov;

Also a title of punk-rock song by Yegor Letov4. Ref to the song Flag over the Castle by Russian band Mashina Vremeni5. Ref to the quote "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." from the Hamlet by William Shakespeare.6. Ref. to the quote from the poem Nighttime Conversation by Bulat Okudzhava