THE BOSTON TEA PARTY

Ocean, don't be lax,
Foam o'er, seethe, awake , hence
Forever tea is taxed
Ungodly with those threepence!
'Twas duty free merchandize
In the hold rotting, I guess,
Shrinking in spells and size ,
Being goes cheerless.

Any sorts we have earned
For our pauper gang -
The point of no return
Is indistinct if you are banged.
On the stern staying, one cries
With buzzing of towropes:
He'd used to pen Bouts rhymes,
But now a thinker arose.

Last packs you may rip off,
Of that tea brewing, to gorge,
Though your seasickness you owe
Not to that nauseous ocean surge.
It is gall and wormwood
Talking o'er, refrains make you sick,
By waves washed out - not good,
And to put off - you are weak.

Yep, your ship with its tops
Would be hard to fit in the slip,
Just a puff pastry 's gobs,
Running after the decent sip -
That is your palimpsest
With its dough, multilayered still.
Bored to chew? Do your best :
To Slavicists you'd appeal.

Though, establish a link,
If possible, broad and odd:
For distinct is the brink
Between presence in that world
And your life after death -
Holography of kerns, where
A fantasy slice, God bless,
Won't cram us up, the Piper!

The Boston tea party
Was served not for you, my mate,
For it's not real tea -
That our dreams' surrogate
To feed your impatient Ghost
Simply for the fuse's sake,
Suggesting to screw whole East Coast,
Its grocery shops as a take.

And you drift, a wormling ,
Through the port, going along
White horses surviving
The Gulf Stream's oppression.
Passing the doggy crap
Passing the dopey unloading dock,
An angler who is belt up,
Like a sketch on the silent rock.

And when passing the rest -
Warehouses, dives lame,
And the surfers whose mores
Only the naiads can tame ,
Passing the gilly tent
And two tramps, and the clambake scorched ,
At once you'd recall that…
Near Moscow, on the porch...

Translated by Alexander Sitnitsky