Original
Алконавт
Ох, бледный - бледный человек,Зачем ты бледностью блестишь,Зачем ушел в спиртовой век?Ответь…Но ты молчишь.
Ох, бледный бедный человек,Зачем ты бедностью блестишь?Как высохших глубоких рекВ низу булыжником лежишь.
Ох, бледный вредный человек,Взглянуть не в силах на себя.Хуже выглядишь больных калек,Как жаль…Как жаль тебя!
Translation
Alconaut
Oh, pale, pale man, why do yougleam with your pallor — why,why did you go to the age of spirits?Answer… But you don't reply.
Oh, pale, poor man,why do you gleam with poverty?Like the bed of a deep, dried-up river,you lie at the bottom like a cobblestone.
Oh, pale, harmful man,you can't bear to look at yourself.You look worse than the sick and crippled;what a pity… What a pity for you!
About the poem
The title welds “alcoholic” to “cosmonaut,” and the poem is an apostrophe in three stanzas whose epithet keeps shifting by a single sound: pale, pale — pale, poor — pale, harmful. Why does the man “shine with pallor,” why “leave for the alcohol age,” why lie “at the bottom like a cobblestone” of a dried river? He is silent; he cannot look at himself. The last line is not a rebuke but pity: “What a pity… what a pity for you!” The comic compound in the title turns addiction into a failed adventure myth. The drinker becomes an explorer whose journey does not enlarge him. Repetition drains glamour from the image, moving from spectacle toward pity and finally toward recognition of harm.