“When the holidays fade away in the city”

When the holidays go out in the city,

When the sinners sleep and the righteous

State storerooms

Quietly leave the monuments.

Hundreds of thousands (and all are similar)

Along the lunar path they go,

And bystanders

Tumbling in the "ambulance"

And the drums are beating!

The drums are beating

Beat, beat, beat!

The pendulum stops on the clock,

The arrows are rushing to run back:

A lone monument walks

Repeated a thousand times.

Either he is in bronze, or he is in marble,

Now he is with a pipe, and then without a pipe,

And behind him, like lambs on the sea,

Gypsum stumps are scratched.

Beat, beat, beat! /.../

The morning of our homeland is pink, Callsigns are flying, squeaking. Bronze goes home, But they lie, hiding, plaster. Let them be crippled before time, But they keep their appearance in the dust. They would be, plaster, human - They will regain greatness! And the drums are beating!.. The drums are beating, They are beating, they are beating, they are beating!

Alexander Galich, "Night Watch", 1963