I am not Hume, Zeno, Radishchev,
Not Okudzhava or a singer,
Not Gomer, Berkeley or Tatishchev,
And also not a Greek Plato

I am not Bergson, Dostoevsky,
Not Antokolsky, even Locke.

My surname isn’t Dostoevsky

Or Grieg, Karamzin, either Blok

Don’t call me Zoshchenko, Fellini,

Or Sun Yat-sen and Paganini;

I don’t want to be the Faulkner

Or any other foreigner.

Neither Blücher, nor Pythagoras,

Paustovsky or Sophocles,

Parmenides, Empedocles,

How many ‘or’ there’ll be?

Protagoras, Lunacharsky,

Feuerbach and Lermontov…

All of them could be my idols,

None of them I’m gonna mime.

I’m not compared with Einstein,

But they try name me Eisenstein.

Tchaikovsky, Kafka, Raphael –

You’ll never guess what is my name. 

I don’t pretend to be Khazanov,

Donizetti, Reagan or Ryazanov,

But Nietzsche, Ilf, Dante, Bergholz

Are good enough as is Helmholtz.

Democritus and Belinsky,

Lanovoy and then Menzhinsky,

They are famous, all well-known,

But my virture is my own

Name, Surname, my Age, my Choice.

Call me now and hear my voice.

They are gone, they are in past.

I have future long to last

I can built myself a life

Any way and any how.

Still the main thing – I’m alive