Quote:
Each thick finger, a fattened worm, gesticulates,
And his words strike you like they were many-pound weights.
His full cockroach moustache hints a laughter benigning,
And the shafts of his boots: always spotlessly shining.
Author: Mandelstam, Osip
Category: Stalin, Josef
Attribution: Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938), Russian poet. “We Exist in a Country Grown Unreal and Strange,” trans by Vladimir Markov and Merrill Sparks.
This satire of Stalin led to Mandelstam’s arrest and exile to a concentration camp.
