Since childhood Fedya was a ground digger He brought home crushed stones and granite Once he brought home such a something That Mom and Dad sobbed violently As a student, Fedya was disposed very much To laud archaeology to the skies He brought to the university such things That everybody around sobbed violently Once from an expedition He brought two rusty thingies And said, this is an ancient treasure Another time in Elista He found a set of false teeth As big as a home distillery His degree work was about ancient relics About Scythians, about pagan gods He used so many swearwords in Latin That those Scythians blushed in their tombs He looked for ancient buildings In a wild frenzy And often cried out loud That it is not impossible To meet a pithecanthropus And banged his breast He decided to end unmarried life And struggled hard to make a family He said, I will find such a wife That all of you will sob violently He searched in every corner In Europe in Asia And soon he dug up his ideal But the ideal appeared to be An ignoramus in archaeology And Fedya buried it again.
© Alex Sokolov. Translation, 2011