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No. 8-9

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Aleksandr Kushner  

Translated from the Russian by Julia Istomina  

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Show Me a Female Criminal

Show me a female criminal,
A woman’s work camp,
A culprit of somebody’s ruins,
An abettor and assistant,
And those living crooked lives. 

God, how charming they are,
Kind-looking and sad,
Within these walls irrelevant. 
How scary are the lawsuits, arrests,
How tormenting their dreams!

Victims of an experiment,
A starry scheme and anger
Removed, they answer, blushing,
As if from under a tarpaulin,
To the correspondent’s question. 

The stars are responsible,
An unlucky horoscope.
Witness — prison uniforms,
But the smiles are rosy,
A lock falls to the brow. 

Ah, leave them alone,
Cancel, maybe, the sentence,
Give something different.
To say such a thing about men, 
I, presumably, couldn’t do. 

 

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