Денис Дорохов - Давным-Давно (стихотворение Глеб Шульпяков)

Support the channel - https://solomatin.me/donat Gleb Shulpyakov's poem is read by Denis Dorokhov. Long, Long Ago Long, long ago, in the days when blood ran in blood, not water (and not even fortified wine): long, long, long ago, when my father was alive and my mother cooked rassolnik (pickle soup) and pelmeni on Saturdays - so, long, long ago, in fourth grade, I traded Romka Golubev a Russian-language copy of "England" magazine for a series of Bulgarian flora stamps and walked home, clutching my briefcase. And at home, I secretly snuck into the closet where we kept the folding bed, and there, among the worn clothes, I opened my briefcase and pulled out a magazine. Meanwhile, the rassolnik soup was cooling, and I gazed at the magical images of a two-story bridge hanging over a river, and the Red Guards' uniforms, and the Black Guards' papakhas, forgetting that it was high time for me to go to the table. Then I spent two hours in the corner. But it wasn't Big Ben and the royal caftans that I remembered as I looked at the wall (or even the Coca-Cola ad), but the boy on the glossy cover, wearing glasses on a gilded chain, and a white, ironed shirt, and black, patent leather shoes, standing by the monogrammed grate and watching an old black man draw his self-portrait on the spit-stained asphalt at the feet of passersby. About twenty years have passed since then. So here I am in London, hanging out in galleries, wandering through pubs and shops, and one morning the devil takes me to Camden Town, where they have a flea market, and there, among the shabby clothes, on the embankment of the old canal, from a woman in blue glasses for pennies, I buy black boots and right there, by the monogrammed grating, I tie the thick laces. And suddenly – a void, and my heart squeezes with melancholy, and everything around me swims, and something about a magazine and uniforms flickers through my mind, and about rassolnik (a soup made of pickle soup) – and nearby, on the spit-stained asphalt, the same old black man in a skullcap draws his self-portrait with multicolored crayons at the feet of passersby, and the London sky above the grating just like in a painting by Constable, or maybe by Turner, swirls. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I dropped a pound into a Coke cup, picked up my shoes, and set off along the canal, and then, where the stone gangplanks were, I placed those very same English boots (made of bullhide, with thick laces) in the water, which obediently carried them somewhere to Copenhagen, and I myself walked on, not knowing where I was going, alone in a crowd of blue shirts, and wandered around the city all day. And so, in the evening, sitting on a hill in some classic park with a bottle of beer, black as tar, I spent two hours gazing at this city, resembling a tin of spinach, but I saw not the colossal buildings of the East End or the nightcap of St. Paul's, but the boy with the oilcloth briefcase who, on Lilac Boulevard, has been walking away from me all these years, strewn with pomegranate peels and candy wrappers from the time when blood ran with blood, not water (and not even fortified wine). A long time ago. A long time ago. A long time ago.