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A hundred talents to God —
Ten each from the tsars,
Who at the expense of the debt
Of simple workers.
We all carry to the Creator,
We gift or we steal:
The bourgeois and the communist.
The tzaddik and the baptist,
The sectarian and the atheist.
“I live for myself,” I say,
I’ll give away what I’ve gathered,
I’ll weigh it out to the kopeck
To the idol-gods —
However you spin it, the Lord’s to the princes.