Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/104

96 Khlebnikov blamed the War on the world's "states of space“, which he likened to the cannibalistic gods of an earlier age:
 * Here in the name of all humanity
 * We turn to negotiations
 * With the states of the past:
 * If you, 0 states, are so fine,
 * As you love to describe yourselves,
 * And as you force your servants to describe you,
 * Then why this food-of-the-gods?
 * Why do we, the people, crunch in your jaws—
 * Between your canine teeth and your molars?

In the future, explained Khlebnikov, these states would be destroyed: a Government of Poets would have taken their place, forming a State of Time. But that day had yet to be reached:
 * And in the meantime, mothers,
 * Carry your children away
 * Should a state anywhere appear.
 * Young people—run off and hide in the caves,
 * Or in the depths of the sea
 * Should you anywhere glimpse a state.
 * Young girls and all those who can't tolerate the odour of death,
 * Fall into a swoon at the word "frontiers":
 * It stinks of corpses.

In Petrograd in the spring of 1917 a grandiose "Carnival of the Arts" was staged. Writes Kamensky:


 * ...writers, artists, composers and actors moved slowly down the Nevsky in a procession of automobiles strewn with flowers. Bringing up the rear of this 'carnival' procession of vehicles was a big lorry, on the side of which was inscribed in chalk:

THE PRESIDENT OF THE TERRESTRIAL SPHERE.


 * In the lorry in a soldier's greatcoat, sitting hunched-up, was Khlebnikov.