Here, for comparative purposes, is Wiman's translation of the "The Stalin Epigram:"
The Stalin Epigram
We live, and love, but our lives drift like mist over what we love.
Two steps we are a whisper; then, gone.
Still, we gather, we gossip, we laugh like humans,
And just like that our Kremlin gremlin comes alive:
His grubworm clutch, all oil and vile,
His deadweight deadwords, blonk blonk.
Listen: his jackhammering jackboots: even the chandelier shakes.
Look: a hairy cockroach crawls along his grin
At the cluck-cluck of turkey-lackeys, and he busts a gut
At the wobblegobble dance one does without a head.
Tweet-tweet, meow-meow, Please sir, more porridge:
He alone, his grub growing hard, goes No! goes Now! goes Boom!
Half-cocked blacksmith, he lifts from hell's hottest forge
His latest law and with it brands a breast, a groin, a brain,
And like a pig farmer who's plucked a blackberry from a vine,
Savors the sweet spurt, before he turns back to his swine.
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Aaron Poochigian
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