A grey and cold afternoon
in winter. The schoolchildren
study. Monotony
of rain behind the glass.
It is the classroom. In a poster
Cain is portrayed
as a fugitive, and Abel, dead,
next to a carmine stain.
With a loud and hollow tone,
the teacher booms, an old man
in shabby clothes, skinny and dry,
holding a book in his hand.
And a whole choir of children
is chanting the lesson:
‘A thousand times a hundred, a hundred thousand;
a thousand times a thousand, a million’.
A grey and cold afternoon
in winter. The schoolchildren
study. Monotony
of rain in the glass.