[A lane in the factory quarters]

A lane in the factory quarters

O dreadful children of abandoned courtyards
Murderers of pallid womanhood
Heeding a call of heart
Come to their wretched mate
To the Penia of the streets, her orphan breast,
Already half-alive from hands insatiable

And now, when taken as a carnal plaything
And cast like litter
Above her lives a church of her invisible anguish

Sergey Stratanovsky, 1972