Sluchevsky K. An Ape

_The bright and rounded Moon is aloft,
And in a circle dance are the lights,
Below, embodied, the black clouds waft
As antediluvian frights.

The fields have been draped with silvery dew…
Fog-shrouded, first as a shape,
A hearse on the road then bursts into view
With, perched on the coffin, an ape._

— You there! At night, who are you to dust
When making your horses lather?
— To bury the folly of men, I must,
Ere dawn, rush along ever farther!

— But how, do tell, when the coffin’s this small!
Within, can’t be all of it, right?
And who’s sent an ape to bear the pall,
Disrupting the funeral rite?

— Well, I am not what it is I seem:
Innately, I am prime,
Me being ‘philosophy’ worldly you deem,
Or simply call ‘shrewdness’, in time;

Once, I in Kant and in Fichte bethought,
In father Arthur then whined,
And Eduard Hartmann upon that begot,
Surprising all of mankind.

And all the aforenamed, one by one,
Were burying folly throughout,
Believing: together with me they’ve done
And piled up wits, no doubt.

You’re no professor of thought at the core,
Methinks you’re but artless alone:
Been burying folly since days of yore,
Yet none of our wisdom has grown!

And here’s the reason: as it’s laid in earth,
The coffin falls through in an instant –
For local folly to see a rebirth,
Perchance, in America distant.

What’s buried at dark – by day’s up fast;
One drops – and another obtains…
It’s clear: the more that the kingdom is vast –
The more to it folly pertains…

— This ape! Stop there, at once, you’re dead!
You damnable jabbering wight!..
_Despite the screams, it has rushed far ahead,
Illumed in full moon’s wide light…_

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«Баллады, фантазии и сказы», «Обезьяна», 1879