From Jeff Edmunds <jhe2@psulias.psu.edu>:

The version of this poem that reached me via the list was both garbled and truncated, perhaps as a result of the encoding. The apparently complete version is available at

http://www.vavilon.ru/texts/prim/krivulin4.html

about two-thirds of the way down the page.

Below is an English version, composed hastily and immediately postprandially. It is whimsical, ugly, unrhymed, and probably wrong in at least three ways. My apologies to Viktor Krivulin.

Marvelous Moment

Why did you, marvelous moment,
Get stuck in my head
Like a fragment from the naughty bits
Of some antique statue?

Let Nabokov explain
The meaning of Russian diffidence and
Shame, and conceal the genital organ
With metaphysical delight
As with a wisp of cloth --

Why? What for and from whom?
Harmony is deity
On line, connected to us
So that we don�t see, but we know,
There is something there, where there is nothing

At 09:40 AM 12/1/2004 -0800, you wrote:

                          ЧУДНОЕ МГНОВЕ

                       зачем ты чудное мгнове
                          в моей засело голове
                    обломком статуи античной
                   от некой части неприличной

                      пускай набоков пояснит
                     что означает русский стыд
                    и срам, и детородный орган
                    метафизическим восторгом
                    как полотенчиком прикрыт -

                     зачем? за что и от кого? -

As far as I know, this is the only instant when Viktor Krivulin (1944-2001), probably the greatest Russian poet of the end of the last millenium, mentions in his verses Nabokov. May be somebody on the List who can read Cyrilic on his/her computer can provide the English (rhymed?) translation of this little poem?
The poem was first published in the book "Stikhi yubileynogo goda" (2001). In my transcription, I have kept the scant punctuation of the original.

Alexey