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Writer's pictureЕвлашев В. Д.

Mikhail Gerasimov "Elektropoem"

Updated: Sep 21, 2022



 

At the exhibition "Electrification. 100 Years of the GOELRO Plan" you will hear literary works dedicated to electrification. At the beginning of the exhibition is Mikhail Gerasimov's optimistic "Elektropoem", full of happiness about the union with electricity. You can see a fragment of the work, voiced by actor Yuri Pavlov, at Zubovsky Boulevard, and read the full text below. I. – Soil Here I came to you. I witness as you sweat with spring passion, Awaiting for fertilization, Awaiting for the dust of golden grains. I see – a shining Of black and fiery eyelashes colored green Until horizon, There, where unrested flocks of other plowmen loom And fervently kissing you with their feet. My scream splatters, Or of any other being: - Soil, - A great beloved of mine! I kiss your snowy glaucous eyes Full-flowing And streams splashing with happiness, Atop of laughing hillock cheeks, In flowers, in flowers. I kiss your conceived body, Fertilized by beams and seeds, With golden bloom at your chest. The answer is: - Inside of you I am, Inside your horse, plowman There I am, clattering down thousands of thousands roads Both terral and orbital, There I am, spreading out in laughter On ploughshare keenly polished. I am your thought, Curling through the fields that are yet to come With aerial seeding And electrical irrigation. Behold: Above horizons Claw-looking smoky paws Of pipes from burgs. Grabbing by hair of straw From black earth stripes… II. Above the iron masses, Stone buildings, My own home As steelflame telescope Till skies a pipe arises. The blue abyss chatters With mirages and pouts, From fire and steam roar groans. But she, Sealed eternally, Brings closer milky mists From within the ethereal ocean, Brings the worlds right before me. I could take every star With my palms And could press every radiance by my eyes. Revealing secrets Even for the straw brains. Teaching wisdom – kind mother, A darling, domain-one. How much love would be put in By prevailing of truth above lies, Mankind incurable infatuation The first one. Put your ear closer and you`ll feel, Beating, Raging of heart of fire and steel. The buildings shutter – Electric pulses in bricks and layers. In nerves and glands both simple and metal. The source of labor, Leaking energy from every cell. I scream to her: - So rough! Anticipating milky foliages, Golden shadows of other gardens, Through you I foresee what`s yet to come In constellations of villages and cities. O, songs of mine, keep ringing, Burn with rainbow, jingle! My heart as star in zenith, Got to know the noon and horizon. III. And when the pipe smokes – On my shoulders Black strands descend Out of a dark shawl pulled down to eyebrows. Leaking from sparkling eyes Radium emanation. Embraced with flames A smile pours Of mother’s passion and bliss. Praying to love and wisdom. Sparks dripping down on my face like tears. It starts blooming with spring. I`m feeling their stinging caress. With muscles and lips drinking Electric milk and rays. A horn. Such a mighty melodiousness! - Isn’t it your son screaming? In thermic incandescence My aluminum bones are ringing, - Take me on your knees, Lull me like a son. IV. Embraced with smoke, Beloved one, Don`t let me suffocate, Through you I’m foreseeing unseeable I`m foreseeing hereafter In the infrared light. Life is attraction, Two yearning electrons Divided in inconceivable whirling, Impossibly seeking their unity. V. Every morning Summer lightnings shivers – Flashes of thought – Dawning sky is thinking above town. And then suddenly a siren – Pink film of dawn, A blanket over the black brains of soil, Ripped apart the roar of iron beast. - Everyone to cast iron woods! To cast iron woo-ooo-ooo-ds! Doors started slamming Restless and clear, - Crawling out of stone lairs. Stains and shadows are jumping among granite, Cobbles are sprouted with them. Black and blue stone Is running above the ashes of roads. So, I also rushed like a tongue of flame In stone glades Between the spurs. I`m seeing a campfire Scattered across hundreds of streets, It is flowing towards one place. Has control over us: - Everyone to cast iron woods! Brick walls, Gateways and pipes – Red glades. Stone stamens Of belfry and towers Soaking up rays And atmospheric charges. Pierced by lightning rays’ crosses, Their metallic fingers Are tickling the clouds and catching lightnings. VI. The factory awakes From the motion of blueish waves, Streams of dark blue flames Flickering, just like a sea mass. Machines and tools Lurking monsters - Power on! Copper paws are pierced with juice, Cast iron jaws are in motion. Somewhere under the roof starts prickle song, From poured bodies, Blood of 37 degrees and higher – Temperature is rising. Arises buzzing boil. The solemn humming of machine It is – a beating of an iron heart. Metamorphosis. Metallic forest rustles, Sparkles with its branches and foliage. The lightning meanders, The air is full of smell of thickened thunderstorm. It tickles nostrils. The boas of belt are diving through. Energy overwhelms Across cast iron windbreaks: - Comrades! That word slipped through within beams. Golden sawdust swarming in the air. The words spark with flares, Grappling into mighty glow: - Comrades! Here and there it shutters, filling the workshops. Shining through metal of machines And human bodies. - Comrades! Thousands of chests breathed in its drunken flow Of metal forest. Soft sawdust under my boot – the moss. Many legs unfolding Fallen leaves – Copper shavings And silver petals. Collecting bouquets They are covered in pollen Exuding fragrances Aluminum, lead, zinc – Their scents. Under my caliper starts crumbling The fragrant pine bark, it flawed And cedar one Through muscles strength surged through. Opposite of me – a girl. Her machine – a plane prepared for take-off. - Hello! – short and brief. Welcoming eyes bathed me With rays of light. Ginger hairs flowing down from shoulders With copper flames. I want to say: - Let me stroke their electric foam I sense – The sparks will flare under the palm, The current will blast through the nerves, Will froth the blood. Work. All muscles tense and trembling. I`m breaking down. Each moment Millions of ions They run out with force. Storm explosions in the blood. I`m feeling an eruption Of horsepower out of me They pour into the metals of machines Into work. Fatigue. Recharging with some stale bread. Swallowing piece by piece Of condensed sunlight And forces of the soil. The smell of sun and fields Is flaring nostrils They widen like buds, Immediately bloomed. A flame within me – Power juices across a thousand streams Translucent through the blood and muscles. I`m loaded for a new work. There are aluminum rods and tubes under my arms Looking like enlarged eyes Of swan feathers Fluff flows from under the incisors, Melts in bugle. It snorts in our faces With blood of rowan bunches. VII. My love unknown, My friends and others – know I`m hugging a dynamo, Its elastic parts. The iron pulses singing Is so carbon. I can feel the beating of an electric heart, Its pushes and punches. Unopened responding shiver Flashing in me. Virgin and flourishing. - Look, look, What a power waterfalls In copper veins under the skin Dynamo blood Foaming and gurgling. What a fortune it is to cad To meet this sun! Darling, dear one, I can sense: Lips as an electric spring, Its splashes And frothy boiling Beating right in my heart. My warmth beams, Runs into the brass skin. Fever of light, Current flows Are shooting through me. I`m feeling cold with my lips Of polished metal. I breathe in deeply A pungent cannabis scent. The golden dust is oozing from the brushes Tickling my face With magnetic eyelashes. Beloved one, Incomprehensible, fast tremble of the movement, My hair covered with phosphorescent sparks Swaying under the electric wind. Conception. Conception in the depths of the inhuman dear, Moves and pushes Inside the mother`s womb, Vibration of the germ Of cosmic voltage forces In millions of volts. The voice: - beware the deadly kiss! Fiery claws piercing the body. Everything trembles and sings within me. Electric hair Splatters blizzy in my face In a transparent shine Two bodies – Metallic and human Freezing in the mystery of fusion. I`m seeing, Seeing it is closed I`m pouring into global depths Of spectral eyes. Through the steam pores Penetrating the unseeable, Splitting the mystical My ultraviolet gaze. Love is the flow Of electric flame within me And machine blood of iron. Love is a shuddering movement Of light and current. VIII. The sun pierced the glass, Her hands flashed with gold, It is a dust of red cooper, It sits also on our faces. Bright grapes of her pupils, Bathed by blue smokes They radiate an unusual brilliance. Constellations of other gazes Being crossed, Like sharp spotlights. Good and evil, Minus and plus. Joy boils up in me And there is no need for words. You and I are atoms, Are specs of one great soul, Of all of these, A collective. Every head is in radiance Of radioactive radiation. Fountains and waves flow from brains, Blouses, Eyes. In smoke and scattered light The atoms swarm, Piercing metallic. Round dances of lifted stars Spinning and colliding. Rhythmical fall and flights, Down and up, On the unseeable orbits of feelings and thoughts. In this closed space A starry stockpile of heads. Thoughts tensed till impossible Becoming visible, alike rays. The gears are pulling Those glowing strings From head to head, They are trembling with musical sound. The heart became enormous, Beating metallic, All the machines and factories in the world Fight within it. Radioactive radiation Splashes out of my eyes, Ebulliently dripping down the forehead. I lean over mystery, With insight and tension of will I`m tearing its veil with the force, Because I`m charged by the work, I`m charged by the love. It piled up in me, so sensitive, Like a spark in hookup, It rolled up like an undischarged thunderstorm, And awaits for other piercing electron. As long as I can carry her in my palms Under the microscope of my pupils. I feel: I am the mighty Ruhmkorff spiral. A winding of thousand-mile nerves Is penetrated by toque. Billions of ions Completing their rotation there – Around world orbits. Higher, volts, Arise, unrepressed will! Have more universal faith. A heart, Pump up the amps Into villages and cities. Countless wires Have webinated the earth. In America and Australia. Pulsating of lightning blood And millions are also feeling its beat Near, near the heart Like me. In astral round dances, On Mars and in the constellations of Lyra, In every pilgrim nebula of the world There is a splashing of electric blood Put your heart to it – you will feel… IX. Factory and city are left behind, Boiling of brawl right after back. I know, there are April rains swinging, Slicking down with twin tongues Kremlin wounds – splashes of metal, Scars on walls and facades. Not squealing from convulsive shots And lightnings. And there is no need. I believe in something else. The itching pain of mine That poured from separation. I`m swallowing with miles spring and atmosphere. Love and struggle, Labor and love – Three great Bastilles, Which were not taken by storm. A hundred faced old-one sprouts there In cafes and boulevards. Predatory faces are swinging in packs Above tables, Above maidens’ meat. I`ve set my sails away, Along the way – a dawn. They’ve cut off from the factory My anchors. Whirl, Whirl in the boil of the spring! I feel the dynamo yearns, It`s there, like a torn heart of mine, Expires, trembles and beats In someone else`s hands I am the flown off plane aluminum sheet, Swirled in the blue boil of spring, Descending, descending Until the claws of the forest – The bushes got me hooked. X. Loneliness and forest. I`m building a hut. It is full of spring juices. When I`m laying down on the old mosses, Ferments flawing down on me Seeping through the bark of my clothes Also, in me the intoxicating fermentation of juices. Two friends are beyond me – An axe and a gun. And so, I am calm. Steel particle machine – The soul of factory presence is here. Under a beam flowing through branches A polished one smiles at me Shared a welcoming nod: You are not alone, You are not alone! The stream of golden-green light expands And sways. It seems to me. – Like ginger strands of hair spilled into the gap. Electric fire caresses me Curling and dissolving. Dynamo! A shot. The gray eagle falls at my feet. Minium splashed over fluttering wings, The spill the cups of flowers, Infused with blue and white light. This smile of light Spills for last time Into its eyes And extinguishes the beating of life. Dying is a shifting of electrons Non-renewable expiration. I`m not alone, My ear picks up a pulse Under every crust. Currents are rising from deepest roots Towards the heights And descend They rub against me. With hot cheek I`m caressing the odorous skins of trunks And feeling responding, Magnetic flutter. I believe, dynamo! Green palms of foliage, Stroking my face. I can clearly read The thoughts of plants. I raise my hands towards the sky And the forest throws up its hands And the sun accepts This strong vowel of life. XI. I`m seeing the playing spiders In transparent silver nets, Like drops of mercury, They are rolling towards each other Spinning, merging, repelling. I`m in love with a lonely tree With thousands of green palms, Stretched towards the sun. I`m in love with crowds of trees Swinging round dances. A touch of outstretched fingers Covered in fragrant resin as sweat, With ringing drops. The lips of flowers have swelled with sweet juice, They are stretching on tiptoes, Swallowing with opened mouths Fertile pollen Out of sparking of blue day. I hear a thousand of rustling kisses. Collecting sparks of seeds with eyelashes From cups and petals, I`m touching pistils and stamens. XII. Every morning from a nearby village A girl comes to my hut. I`m trading fowl for milk. With morning dawn So accidently and expected This field girl sprouts Under the green roof of my house. Golden and thin – she is a ripe ear, Smell of wheat flows out of her. Braids sway heavily – Mellow sheaf Filled with grain. I also notice: A tremble of pearly dew drops On bare feet. On light nails Sanded by grass. She touched once, Stroked the leather jacket on me Which preserved the sparks of iron dust. She swiftly pulled her hand away – Her cheeks immediately swelled With exploding red flame, It was the current that spurted out of me. She disappeared with an animal leap, Have shouted: -Tomorrow – the ploughing! This flash exposed my soul. Wheat smell Has watered with electrojuice My salivary glands. XIII. Gigantic sun gear arises, Colored crimson of tension. Grappled with the globe. The wastes are smoky, Dewy meadows and clouds Rhythmic running of rays From golden claws Filled the atmosphere with shimmer. Leaves, birds and folks By the power of motion Are knocked out of the dazing of sleep. Spasm of cheerfulness Penetrates every muscle, Every nerve of a plant. The sky trembles and shimmers – As molten blue aluminum. - Spring, you are stroking my hair in vain And by kisses of winds Blushing my cheeks. I`m hearing a voice of iron. Of another beloved one. I`m seeing the plants grow And mature instantly, ready for love. The stems are stretching, Freezing in kisses Every bud, every flower, Is a little dynamo, That sprinkles seed and odor, Infused with dust And bright electric juices of passion. - Are you thinking about someone else? Don`t you just notice me? Her cannabis scent Has brought me out of my daze. - Oh, no, I`m just not poisoned with henbane, That steppe sleepy grass. Forgive me, Sometimes I`m thinking about someone else. But you are also a miracle Just like this golden blade of grass. She trembles with love. And I love her. Loose hair Sways across shoulders With copper flame. A whole fire spilled from the head. Green eyes are attracting – Two magnets. I want to merge together with them. I`m seeing thousands of pupils Of buds and stems. Nature intensely gazes upon us. A falcon is hung in the skies, Swaying crisscross On the golden webs of the rays. Peering in. The birds are seeking each other, Excitedly calling with shrieks. Magnetic waves are flowing from females, They spray them with their wings, The circles running for miles away. Behind each, an invisible flame foams, Comet tails swept through space In a thousand directions Where drunken males Are diving recklessly Wedding flights with music, singing And aerial games. The pines are clouding with golden mist Of seed dust. These clouds, Murmuring currents of life, Rushing into the lungs of birds, Foaming in the primal And human breath. Love is a bright shower, With flowers and lightnings, She rings with blue bells. Love is two electrons, Merged in an incomprehensible whirling Impossibly seeking disunion. XIV. A margin. I`m seeing out of the cart – With green flame of sprouts The spring splashed Into the black earth waves of arables. Two nearest hillock-twins, Like firm maiden breasts, Shining with golden fluff of the fields. And the red stones on their tops – Cold nips, In the milk hazing of morning dew. I`m harnessing the hazel one. He strains his horsepowers, With muscles pours them into motion. Plough claws bite in. Cods of soil – black roses, Petals fall of From the floor of a laughing plowshare. She leads the horse the horse with the reins, All so bright, so happy – Soul of margins and fields. Her bare feet are diving Among black earth waves, They are shining with black silver now. - Soil, - A great beloved of mine! Reply is: - Inside of you I am, plowman And inside of your horse… XV. A midday thunderstorm. A blue-snow cloud nestled To the sun's flaming cheeks, It turns violet. I feel the elusive breath Of the chill of the world's space In large, refreshing drops. The clouds have become funneled, Sprouting thunderstorms And soon with the golden pinks of lightning All is cut to an ache. The electric wind Dives into the black earth's waves. Someone in the fields With huge leaps catching lightning. Atmospheric electrical dust Fertilizes every drop. The ozone smell widens our nostrils And the horizons. Explosions and thunder, It's the tractor horse rumbling And snorting gasoline. The downpour and the sun caress us. Drops of cellular honey Drops of honey drip down our faces, our clothes And smoking horse hair. The earth is perfumed with sweat, The sweet fumes Pervades to the depths. With my lips I feel it, Through the rain's moisture, The blue veins in the neck Where the golden fuzz is The frozen splashes of sunshine. A whiff of clear purity. The wheel of the raluga flashed In a second-millionth jiggle, Faster than thought. That wondrous tremor Sheds joy. I am all earthly, In spectral sparks, Infused with the scent of falsehood. I hear the light humming Of worlds far away, Through the rainbow, the sun, And fresh tears of rain. They weave a transparent wreath Over the earth. XVI. Twilight rolled on quickly. The deep night watered the earth. The stars ripened. A fragrance poured from them, The fresh breeze Of shivering leaves of light. Someone's nodding to me In these singing branches. A slight greeting, An elusive movement from on high, Suddenly pricked my nerves With an iron strain. I cut short my tale Of wandering luminaries And milky nebulae, Which in the gardens of spring Of plum and apple blossoms there. - Sweetheart, Leave me alone. "The footsteps in the dewy grass are silent. Silence. I stare at Mars unblinking. Space melted and the distance exorbitant. I see it like an open book, Clear and close to the creepy. I want to step back. I see the shimmering of pulses, The swaying wisps and flowers Little dynamos Radiating dust and fragrance... Silence. Black walls of trees surround me. I smell a hostile breath. Threatening gestures of loose muscles. The splash of wings, The cries of owls Slapping my cheeks. The beating of a native deep beneath the earth. My feet feel The slight throbbing of veins of copper and iron There in the depths. A deep silence embraces me And the hut. I open my eyes, darkness, I close them, darkness. A strange restlessness sprouts in me. The stifling fumes of decay Suddenly came upon my body On my lying body. The darkness has thickened to a vein, It slams into me, And my lungs are seized. I hear footsteps and stomping voices. Forest men in beastly skins At once they surround me. My cheeks, through the wool, Shivering with poisonous smiles. - You are ours, You are our man of iron! They bind themselves with signs of the cross, Shaking their hairy skins in prayer. All the dark forces of the forest, The beliefs of mossy antiquity They surround the forest, Hissing with their wings... The shaggy ghosts roar And shake their beards. Suddenly an abyss grows, The abyss grows wider and darker. The island of light rumbles down Into the blackness of the world. I leap and shout: - And lights and cars! Grabbing my gun from the stage. - No, we shall win! A ray of starlight breaks through I am at once soothed. The cold barrel touches On my flaming cheek. A sweet caress drenches me. I am stroked by a small palm Of brushed steel, Kisses my lips. I feel the soul of the plant That is present here. XVII. The darkness becomes unbearable. I'm drowning in it. - Light, light! I remembered a little flashlight. An electric light bulb Flashed a bright star. I look at it with admiration, Bringing it closer to my eyelashes And I pull it away. From the hut the shadows are running With bent backs, From this glittering bundle Of golden stalks. I draw near, I draw far. My face shines with these kisses. Night butterflies fly in, They begin to whirl around me, Swirling around Like dark planets On secret orbits. "The May beetle swoops With a triumphant buzz An invisible comet. I feel the air swaying. The musical sound has watered the hut. Insects with transparent wings Tremble and accumulate With silver foam. Luminous nebulae. Along parabolas disappear into space. The bat with clawed wings The source of light Hid for a moment Eclipse. I stare unblinking into eternity. The trembling of my star Widens and wavers. The giant world, Flies swiftly towards me. Blood rushes to my head. With a metallic thump My heart fills everything. Catastrophe. The heart collides with a star. Darkness. But it was one moment. A new flash of unquenchable light Embraced the morning dawn. XVIII. Dynamo I must put On the watermill. Day and night it snorts. So ancient, All in green slime, in lichen, Shaking her grey beard, Shaking off the glacial age. Foamy slopes spill from the weir. And wooden lips sip insatiably Out of the pond bowl: The water curving, glossy back, Unconsciously tops the turbine. Crunching bones and cartilage In stone teeth. There's a clatter, a chant. Grinding words sprinkle down: - If with longing and laziness If the head is clouded with laziness... And the brain of the laziness "If the brain of a lazy mind.., Go to the mill To spin the millstones. The stone jaw chews and hums. - Turn the millstone, Turn the millstone!... A thin squeak pierces through: - Don't be a fool, don't be a fool! I work for days and nights. With what love I gather The rusty body of the motor. I stroke every part with a file. And I caress the screws with the sandpaper And every joint. The mill foams and makes noise, The hissing and hissing And the hissing of hostile voices. Shadows wave Thickets and reeds The woody ribs and the reeds Into wooden ribs. The blades Above my head. But my chisel under the hammer The shrieks are more and more beggarly, It cleaves this hiss, The darkness And the tongue of condensed chaos. It slashes like the first cries Of nascent life. White dust snorts From stone nostrils, Blinding and suffocating. The millstones are rolling They want to snatch me, But I am in creative flame. Light fever shakes all my tissues Shakes all my tissues. With every movement of thought and muscle Spreading gigantic Electromagnetic waves. They pierce the wooden womb Of the mill. - Dynamo, How much joyous wine in you And light fermentation! The girl is my companion, She helps me. So timidly she takes The iron parts, - As if they would bite, She gives me her tools, she burns them. But sometimes With tense and unmoving gaze, Like a bird under fire, She looks at me. With what thoughts does this soul of the mill and the forest The soul of the mill and the forest? Whispers: - I do not understand, I don't understand how it's possible Out of lifeless iron bones To create a living body, A wonderful body In which the sun beats... The mermaid's eyes weep. She trembles in anticipation Of the extraordinary The unknown never to be known. From sweeps and strokes I sweat. That smell alarms her, Her nostrils swell like a beast's. At dusk she kissed The blisters on my hands. Rust stained her lips. She has known the sweetness And bitterness The power of And the passion of iron XIX. The first light bulb flashed. From what nebula, What star rolled down. Into those muddy reeds! The crowd of men swayed - The electric fingers pushed The stone men, Crushed with light. Through straw beards flowed, The smiles of smiles were wreathed. Choking, they swallow the new light, Drinking and drinking, handfuls and handfuls From the spring of light, "From the spring of light that bursts beneath the hand of man. The sluice sobbed desperately And hangs in foamy tresses. On the skeletons of trees, On the poles We hung light nerves. The wooden bones of the village squeezed. With log ribs, With brass muscles. Hundreds of electric stings Stabbed into the hearts of beasts And men's hearts. In the centuries-old blindness of the windows, "The windows, smoked with matches, The constellations have flashed. New eyes have opened on the world. Mikhail Gerasimov 1922

 

Retrieved from: https://goelro.mosmuseum.ru/poem/

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