America the Most Beautiful
Your Brooklyn Bridge
flung across some great water
o worthy son of our Great Wall!
Your graffiti artists
scribbling black jokes on the Mack trucks underground
o worthy sons of Mayakafka!
Your buxom women
their charms slung like rubles in a samovar
worthy daughters of the blue suede shoes!
Your Odessa-esque cinema
simpering toward the golden west
a Hamlet of the steppes?
Your Empire State Building
rising as high in brilliant stories
as Anton Chekhov the master!
Your corn fed to the gals of the Midwest
yellow-haired as the house of the rising sun
where anarchists are kings just like our own Prince Kropotkin!
Your Lincoln Continental Divide dividing your two continents
of white and not-white
as the Urals divide our Europe from our Asia!
Your motels in Shreveport
with paper-protected toilet & free ice
o worthy of Pushkin’s faded tailcoat!
Your automobiles as powerful as dobrolyubovs
spitting hot fire in a night dark as Stalin’s heart
hurling Dostoevsky big as a man’s head!
Your cowboys like Mongols
honky-tonking on the back of a horse
such worthy sons of Genghis Khan!
Your fruited plains where homosexuals get a fair shake
where a good horse is never a bad color
& you don’t get splinters from wrestling timber wolves!
Your mysterious games – football the unwieldy, dwarf-tossing
and the sadly beautiful ball of base
o not unlike a caviar blini!
Your chariot slipping to a sweet home in Chicago
swept from the bellies of lead
o poet worthy of a Volga drowning!
Your psycho-killers angrier than any in Mother Russia
mass-murdering more than we could hope to
dressed in our drab fur hats!
O America most beautiful!
how I long to reach your golden shore
America that goes for the gold!
America, I love your gold-diggers with their hearts of gold
America such a land of gold braid and gold bricking
America I expect a gold star from you
America your Grand Central Station is a bowl for gold fish
America starring Goldilocks
as the First Lady of speak shows on television.
America where I can buy all the turnips I can eat in your supermarkets
all the shoes I can wear in your shoe-permarkets
America someday I will be your premier I will control fogtown
& listen to the slush pumps play your negro jazz
I will operate an oofus and talk your kafooster
I will ice your president and eat your hot tamales
America, so’s your old man!
by Magdalen Dubriski
translated by Elinor Nauen
Your Brooklyn Bridge
flung across some great water
o worthy son of our Great Wall!
Your graffiti artists
scribbling black jokes on the Mack trucks underground
o worthy sons of Mayakafka!
Your buxom women
their charms slung like rubles in a samovar
worthy daughters of the blue suede shoes!
Your Odessa-esque cinema
simpering toward the golden west
a Hamlet of the steppes?
Your Empire State Building
rising as high in brilliant stories
as Anton Chekhov the master!
Your corn fed to the gals of the Midwest
yellow-haired as the house of the rising sun
where anarchists are kings just like our own Prince Kropotkin!
Your Lincoln Continental Divide dividing your two continents
of white and not-white
as the Urals divide our Europe from our Asia!
Your motels in Shreveport
with paper-protected toilet & free ice
o worthy of Pushkin’s faded tailcoat!
Your automobiles as powerful as dobrolyubovs
spitting hot fire in a night dark as Stalin’s heart
hurling Dostoevsky big as a man’s head!
Your cowboys like Mongols
honky-tonking on the back of a horse
such worthy sons of Genghis Khan!
Your fruited plains where homosexuals get a fair shake
where a good horse is never a bad color
& you don’t get splinters from wrestling timber wolves!
Your mysterious games – football the unwieldy, dwarf-tossing
and the sadly beautiful ball of base
o not unlike a caviar blini!
Your chariot slipping to a sweet home in Chicago
swept from the bellies of lead
o poet worthy of a Volga drowning!
Your psycho-killers angrier than any in Mother Russia
mass-murdering more than we could hope to
dressed in our drab fur hats!
O America most beautiful!
how I long to reach your golden shore
America that goes for the gold!
America, I love your gold-diggers with their hearts of gold
America such a land of gold braid and gold bricking
America I expect a gold star from you
America your Grand Central Station is a bowl for gold fish
America starring Goldilocks
as the First Lady of speak shows on television.
America where I can buy all the turnips I can eat in your supermarkets
all the shoes I can wear in your shoe-permarkets
America someday I will be your premier I will control fogtown
& listen to the slush pumps play your negro jazz
I will operate an oofus and talk your kafooster
I will ice your president and eat your hot tamales
America, so’s your old man!
by Magdalen Dubriski
translated by Elinor Nauen