For want of a nail the shoe was lost,
For want of a shoe the horse was lost,
For want of a horse the rider was lost,
For want of a rider the battle was lost,
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of horseshoe nail.

Or in Marshak’s translation:

There was no nail - the horseshoe was gone.
There was no horseshoe - the horse went lame.
The horse went lame - the commander was killed.
The cavalry is defeated - the army is fleeing.
The enemy enters the city, not sparing prisoners,
Because there was no nail in the forge.

You know, since childhood, this poem has made my heart skip a beat. No joke. For me it has always been not just a poem, but a ballad, a poem, and a whole epic. A story about life and death, historical novel, philosophical treatise. There is a surprising amount packed into this little poem. Here it is - brevity, which is the sister of talent.
I imagined this medieval city and its inhabitants as real. A cavalry commander whose young life and brilliant career were cut short so stupidly and absurdly. And then - a burning city and a young mistress of the castle, committing suicide so as not to be captured. And a ruthless conqueror who gives the city up for plunder...
Silly, probably, in the style of youthful tragic romanticism.
In general, I love these English poems - about the king, about the cat, about Robin Bobbin, etc. But about the nail and the horseshoe, I still read and listen with bated breath. And I remembered because I watched a cartoon - a humorous opera based on this poem: Because there was no nail in the forge. The city there is good, just the way I imagined it as a child. (in the comments there is a link to the same cartoon on YouTube)

Sometimes you have to do strange things. Just now I listened to children's poems by English poets translated by S. Marshak and performed by Sergei Yursky. I came to the poem “The Nail and the Horseshoe.” Here it is, everyone knows it:
"There was no nail -
The horseshoe is missing
There was no horseshoe -
The horse went lame
The horse went lame -
The commander was killed
The cavalry is broken
The army is running!
The enemy is entering the city
Without sparing prisoners,
Because in the forge
There was no nail!"

And I remembered that this poem had a very specific historical basis. That's what they say, anyway. During the Battle of Vatrloo (1815), the French had every chance of winning. Moreover, they even confidently won it. The French cavalry under the command of Murat, having launched an attack that was breathtaking in its audacity and courage, captured the English batteries. The French began to gain the upper hand along the entire front. But the British threw back the cavalry, the battery resumed fire, the tide of the battle was turned, and Napoleon suffered a well-known defeat. After Waterloo, many wondered why the French, having captured the British battery, did not put it out of action. But everything turned out to be simple. In those days, to disable a gun, cavalrymen hammered an ordinary nail into the hole to ignite the gunpowder. Then they knocked off the cap - and that’s it, despite all the external intactness, the gun was not ready for combat. And everything would have been fine, but the cavalrymen really did not like to carry nails with them. An inconvenient thing in a mounted attack... Everyone tried to get rid of their nails, and, if necessary, ask for a dozen or two from their comrades. In the case of the English battery, everyone hoped, and at the decisive moment no one had nails. So the British got a completely combat-ready battery, which changed the course of the battle.
Like this. And you say “nails”...

Nail and horseshoe.
Read by S. Yursky.

From an anecdote, “It’s simpler Muller, you forgot to fasten your fly.” . .
The proletariat dictator seriously thought that he was a dictator and did not work, but drank. . .
I drank what I gave away my Fatherland to the Alcoholic for a bottle

Original taken from vvdom c Because there was no nail in the forge...

Oh small, but main reason bankruptcy of a great country

The Soviet Union collapsed due to the betrayal of the then elite. Now it's already indisputable fact. But there is no need to look for CIA, Mossad or MI6 agents among the party and Soviet leadership of those years. No external enemy did not do more for the collapse of the USSR than those people who stood on the podium of the Mausoleum on November 7 and May 1. Through their efforts proletarian state first it became ideologically and spiritually bankrupt, and only then the end of 1991 brought the final line under its agony.

But it all started much earlier, as evidenced by the very revealing history of the early 1970s. Soviet people remember her with aspiration...

At that time, the future CPSU ideologist Mikhail Zimyanin occupied the chair of editor-in-chief of Pravda, the main print organ of the Communist Party and everything Soviet Union. Once he organized the arrival of a delegation to the USSR fellow fighters from the Italian communist newspaper Unita. As the final chord of her study of the achievements of socialism, a meeting took place at the editorial office of Pravda.).

The honored guests were then invited to the editorial board, and Mikhail Zimyanin asked them to talk about their trip around our country. One of the Italians expressed the general opinion:
— We visited the Gardens of Eden...

What's wrong beautiful in this story, what gives reason to consider it an illustration of the betrayal of the Soviet elite?

The USSR of the 1970s, as those who are older have not yet forgotten, was a country of a total shortage of quality goods. Things have not yet reached empty store shelves, as in the late 1980s. But what was on them was not in demand, to put it mildly. This also applied to shoes - even for Czech and Yugoslav products there was a real hunt, and the provinces did not receive such imports at all, going to regional special distributors. And now the party boss, propagating Leninist modesty and Bolshevik asceticism from the pages of his newspaper, flaunts custom-made Italian boots, paid for in foreign currency. And in front of the entire editorial board.

Trifle? Yes, but very revealing. Showing the colossal gap between the party word and real deal. It was this abyss that ultimately made the collapse of the USSR so easy and quick - people are not blind or stupid either...

Further, the editor-in-chief of Pravda talks about his partisan past as the legal basis for his right to exclusive footwear. But at the same time they were alive millions front-line soldiers, whose legs, beaten by heavy military roads, needed special care no less. What about shoes? Thousands veterans Patriotic War they huddled in communal apartments, dilapidated huts and even barracks with amenities in the yard. By the way, the cost of a good Italian pair of shoes, made to order, was - in the price scale of that time - quite comparable to the price of a cooperative apartment.

Well third- O partisan paths in Belarusian forests. Mikhail Vasilyevich Zimyanin really had something to do with Belarusian partisans. As a member of the Northwestern task force Central Committee of the CP(b)B, this regional headquarters partisan movement Republic. And in Polesie his legs really appeared: “ In 1941 - one once, in 1942 - two, but in 1943 - already eight "(this was recorded, however, from the words of Mikhail Vasilyevich himself).

In the title photo, Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee M.V. Zimyanin stands behind General Secretary L.I. Brezhnev, to the right of Yu.V. Andropov, who is wearing a general’s jacket.

And now - like the cherry on the cake. From the same memories.

After the editorial board, I asked Mikhail Vasilyevich how he was not embarrassed to take off his shoe? He replied:
— When talking with people, truth is the most powerful argument.

Turn out the lights, as they say! However, why be surprised if by that time the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev himself already fervently believed that the fate of the country and victory in the Great War was predetermined by his party political work on Malaya Zemlya.

This was the Soviet elite of that time - deceitful, greedy, two-faced. Betrayed what lay at the deepest basis of the USSR: faith in the state equality and justice. However, compared to the current ministers and oligarchs, she looks almost like a saint. But only because the current ones - below the baseboard.

Looking at how our modern elites, year after year, day after day, persistently break through bottom and even bottom, sincerely believing in his titanic struggle to build Great Russia, one would like to ask: did the sad and bitter experience of their predecessors teach them nothing?

Great ones about poetry:

Poetry is like painting: some works will captivate you more if you look at them closely, and others if you move further away.

Small cutesy poems irritate the nerves more than the creaking of unoiled wheels.

The most valuable thing in life and in poetry is what has gone wrong.

Marina Tsvetaeva

Of all the arts, poetry is the most susceptible to the temptation to replace its own peculiar beauty with stolen splendors.

Humboldt V.

Poems are successful if they are created with spiritual clarity.

The writing of poetry is closer to worship than is usually believed.

If only you knew from what rubbish poems grow without shame... Like a dandelion on a fence, like burdocks and quinoa.

A. A. Akhmatova

Poetry is not only in verses: it is poured out everywhere, it is all around us. Look at these trees, at this sky - beauty and life emanate from everywhere, and where there is beauty and life, there is poetry.

I. S. Turgenev

For many people, writing poetry is a growing pain of the mind.

G. Lichtenberg

A beautiful verse is like a bow drawn through the sonorous fibers of our being. The poet makes our thoughts sing within us, not our own. By telling us about the woman he loves, he delightfully awakens in our souls our love and our sorrow. He's a magician. By understanding him, we become poets like him.

Where graceful poetry flows, there is no room for vanity.

Murasaki Shikibu

I turn to Russian versification. I think that over time we will turn to blank verse. There are too few rhymes in the Russian language. One calls the other. The flame inevitably drags the stone behind it. It is through feeling that art certainly emerges. Who is not tired of love and blood, difficult and wonderful, faithful and hypocritical, and so on.

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin

-...Are your poems good, tell me yourself?
- Monstrous! – Ivan suddenly said boldly and frankly.
– Don’t write anymore! – the newcomer asked pleadingly.
- I promise and swear! - Ivan said solemnly...

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov. "The Master and Margarita"

We all write poetry; poets differ from others only in that they write in their words.

John Fowles. "The French Lieutenant's Mistress"

Every poem is a veil stretched over the edges of a few words. These words shine like stars, and because of them the poem exists.

Alexander Alexandrovich Blok

Ancient poets, unlike modern ones, rarely wrote more than a dozen poems during their long lives. This is understandable: they were all excellent magicians and did not like to waste themselves on trifles. Therefore, behind each poetic work of those times, a whole Universe was certainly hidden, filled with miracles - often dangerous for those who carelessly awaken the dozing lines.

Max Fry. "Chatty Dead"

I gave one of my clumsy hippopotamuses this heavenly tail:...

Mayakovsky! Your poems do not warm, do not excite, do not infect!
- My poems are not a stove, not a sea, and not a plague!

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky

Poems are our inner music, clothed in words, permeated with thin strings of meanings and dreams, and therefore, drive away the critics. They are just pathetic sippers of poetry. What can a critic say about the depths of your soul? Don't let his vulgar groping hands in there. Let poetry seem to him like an absurd moo, a chaotic pile-up of words. For us, this is a song of freedom from a boring mind, a glorious song sounding on the snow-white slopes of our amazing soul.

Boris Krieger. "A Thousand Lives"

Poems are the thrill of the heart, the excitement of the soul and tears. And tears are nothing more than pure poetry that has rejected the word.