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„Have you even read them?“

„I have, and so has the editor. Is something wrong?“ Mama sits down without objection on the last chair, the closest to the door.

„I’ll say!“ snorts Aleksey Ivanovich, and begins to read:

• Disarmament. Not waiting
• For a bomb in an envelope, or a mine concealed within its lines,
• Not summoning or invoking those things
• That are hidden in a flask of gin.

• Not being blown to pieces
• By the sound of a falling line,
• And not taking the dots you have written down
• To arrange them in rows.

He throws the newspaper onto the table and yells:

„What do you think this is?!“

Mama trembles from the sharp cry, and without understanding the question being asked, she answers cautiously.

„Verses. About love.“

„You’re so shortsighted! And you’re a member of the Communist party!“

„I don’t understand…“ Mama says timidly.

„There are Soviet-American disarmament negotiations going on right now in Moscow. If Johnson reads this opus, he might think the Soviet Union is against concluding this agreement. Listen to what this scoundrel is writing!“