We. Yevgeny Zamyatin

flowers⁵ fluttering in the wind.

      In keeping with old tradition, the ten women adorned the Benefactor’s unif, still wet from the sprays, with flowers. With a majestic stride, like a hierophant, He slowly descended, slowly passed among the tribunes – trailing behind Him the delicate white branches of women’s arms, raising a millions-strong storm of voices. Then, the same cries in honour of the legion of Guardians, invisibly present among us, here, in our ranks. Who knows: perhaps it was them, the Guardians, that the imaginations of ancient men presaged when imagining their gentle and terrible ‘archangels’, who watch over each person from birth.

      Yes, there was something from ancient religion, something cleansing, like thunder and storms, in this ceremony. Readers: have you experienced moments like these? I feel sorry for you if you haven’t . . .

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      5 Which came, of course, from the Botanical Museum. I personally don’t see anything beautiful about flowers or anything else from the savage world that was chased out beyond the Green Wall long ago. Only things that are useful and rational are beautiful: machines, boots, formulas, food etc.