In garden or in orchard wide,
We dreamed of freedom side by side.
We gained it, yet the people die
Too thick, untrained, as years go by.
Perhaps by folly, perhaps by fate,
Now the nomenklatura weighs on culture’s gate.
So it’s not easy here to speak
Of theater’s fate in days so bleak.
Yet placing hand upon our heart,
We start—our theater won’t depart,
It draws us like the father’s home.
And Malyarov is to blame alone.
Not Molière, nor de Vega he,
Yet in a sense—a landmark, see.
Though if we wait some fifty years,
Or sixty, time enough appears.
And over tea, a brotherly quorum met,
With sober eyes to judge the past, I bet,
We’ll see that Parnassus fails us still.
The scene’s unhealthy, lacking skill:
Homer exists—but Yanvarev is gone,
Shakespeare remains—but Malyarov, none.
With steadfast experience in hand,
We’ll reorganize that land.
But it won’t happen, come what may,
Without Andrey Andreyevich to stay.
So with him together, we will live
Two hundred more years to give.
In short, stay well, and celebrate,
Anatoly Malyarov, great!