Leovskis blues

Leovski Donov my brother called himself: a genuine Russian name as it sounded; and pleased with himself he was, as he drew a picture of Lenin with goatee and all; and the chin jutted out, reflecting the revolutionary’s iron will, he said. Next he started writing poems: none of your bourgeois preoccupation with selfreflection, or of pastoral nature which our local poets were good at. Leovski wrote poems that the workers wanted to hear, as he read them out loudly to me. He also wrote essays, extolling progressive forces the world over.