TE17 Mysterious Montenegro

Four Poems

Never Talk with Strangers

Satan, Jesus, Stalin, Pontius Pilate as essential ingredients a great Artist and the woman who loves him assorted literary critics in 1930s Moscow, poet’s bitter road to truth, demonic henchmen (including a big black cat) Muscovites are obsessed with espionage: the enemy is scattered around the country Their only desire is to bring «mischief and harm» Talking to strangers is dangerous They are of «the breed of the unknown ».

The literary authority Berlioz and young poet Bezdomny debate on a bench at the Patriarch’s Ponds subject is the existence of Jesus when a third man joins the discussion he introduces himself as professor Woland Berlioz will be decapitated that very day, he predicts, by a Russian woman,

a member of the Komsomol and it was inevitable, because “Annushka has already bought the sunflower oil,

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