Nikolai Ernestovich Radlov
(Born St. Petersburg, 1889; died Moscow [?], 1942)
Samuil Iakovlevich Marshak
(Born Voronezh, 1887; died Moscow, 1964)

Parisian Parade, TASS No. 0538, August 17, 1942

Stencil
2518 x 1000 mm
“SS” in Russian stands for “son of a bitch."
And recently,
For prestige,
Berlin paraded its fierce SS-men,
Along the streets of Paris.

And that same day
The German Great Dane
Guarding France
Began to bark more fiercely,
Than before,
In order to be heard
On the English Channel:
“Woof! Woof! Our Parisian parade
Lasted two hours straight!”

A dirty lapdog named Fifi
From the agency HAVAS-OFI [the French news agency]
Squealed in response:
“Parade, yes, parade! Here in Paris!"

And to this barking of fascist hounds
Others responded from the distance:
“The parade lasted a hundred hours!”
Two small dogs yelped
In Sofia.

Inscribed on the map:
Great Britain

Alarmed
The dogs’ chorus
Is still not
Silent.

But why are the dogs barking?
Apparently, they’re trying to scare someone.

And, as is always
The case with dogs,
They only end up
Scaring themselves.
Gift of the USSR Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, 2010.143