Translation:Floor-cleaners' song

Floor-cleaners' Song Ever-scrubbing, ever-rubbing, Ever-grubbing, ever-grumbling Red flaxen shirt Fringe-frilly girt

‘All alike – no Bart from Barry – I can’t tell you, folks, apart!’ ‘We will diddle the unwary We will have of you the start.’

Do you grudge us here? Only waxers, we’re. Treading flooren cloths We will zap the moths

Red-featheréd cock, Go dance on woodblock!

Ever-banging, ever-bagging, Not a room has room enough Miss a choker of your granny? It’s the cleaners lifting stuff

We rub red-hot As like as not … Tom-foo-le-ry! Light-fingered spree!

Parquet-scrubber easy does it: Roll it over and across! Reeling, glide at you, we dance it: ‘Tip us nicely for the gloss!’

It’s no putty that we daubs On your ashen-wooden floors It’s the bloody sweat we daubs Over all your pretty floors

We polish it hard! No furniture’s barred!

Low as cinder, soft as cotton … If you sign us on a job, Weep for goddess! Nose is broken! But I only brushed a jot!

What a marble femme all over … Dress her up from Lamanova! We don’t heed what’s marble on ’er Lump her up, ’n’ that we’re gonna!

Naked feet Feel the heat!

Cleaner-upper’s sickly fellow: Sweat all over, while you prance! Hence the visage – drab and sallow: It’s the limb as ruddy runs

We trace with feet We toil at speed; The lordly ones Get dance from us

Stumpy toes are five to tally Just like any lordly foot! Not to worry! In your dwelling We will shortly down it put!

On you toil, even Till your heart is sore! Sixéd-toed peon Is for all in store!

Have a ball – that’s how we like it! Are the doors all safely locked? … Why the shirts are red? Well, strike it – Red on red will mark no blot!

By the Lard! Whose that blood? Don’t you know it? Shut and stow it!

Just as lord will go besmear it, Booting over all the sheen Our business is to clear it, Mopping, waxing, polishing

Let the dust fly! Let the wax dry!

Keen and wary, grim and scary Dick and Harry – proletarry Flared pants Shuffle intense

It’s no bugs we treat As the vermin breed When the wax is floored We will get the lord!

Hell, shame and shock Set on woodblock! Here’s to
 * Red Guard’s fighting cock!



Detectives run quick and deft A merchant’s been stabbed and left

You face all the aftermath: A merchant’s been scrubbed to death

Полотёрская_(Цветаева)