Yuri Leiderman
Facebook
September 29, 2021
“The Black General”
I arrived in the city of Heraklion and checked into the hotel. I turned on the TV while I got settled in. On TV5Monde, a group of intellectuals in well-chosen nonchalant jackets was discussing Rimbaud, Kafka and Gallimard’s new releases.
I should have been like them, I thought enviously.
I could have become like them, I thought, horrified.
There is no Pinochet to reign them in,
No Black Colonel,
No Black General,
I thought with a grin.
So I am the very last Black General, overgrown and useless and grassy, I thought without much emotion, after appending hands, palms, and wrists, like claws, like threads, to the seams.
Translated and reproduced here with the artist’s kind permission by the Russian Reader
The Russian Reader 