[Carl Copeland]

I need a little advice. I’ve translated a couple poems by Mikhail Zenkevich and have another coming up this week. There’s one more of his I thought of doing, called “Petersburg Nightmares,” but have almost thought better of it. The N lures a little homeless girl to his apartment with sweets and later dumps her body in the canal. There are no details of what he did to her, but I have a feeling no one is going to thank me for this poem, let alone publish it. It may not be fair to the poet either, since I don’t plan to translate many more of his poems, and this one is unrepresentative, in the most disturbing way, of his work. Should I leave it alone?