Oldie's prose is inseparable from poetry. Kasidas in "I'll Take It Myself", ballads from "Songs of Peter Slyadek", lyrics from "The Magician in the Law", mocking satires from "The Order of the Holy Bestseller", haiku, tanka and rubaiyat, friendly epigrams and dedications generously scattered throughout the expanses of books, hidden under the author's pseudonyms "Niru Bobovay" or "Thrasimed of Melch", stylizations of Burns, Villon, Khayyam, Al-Mutanabbi, the poems "Odysseus, son of Laertes" and "Those Like Them". And now, finally, you have in your hands a solo volume of poems by Oleg Ladyzhensky, which includes many poems, both previously published in the context of Oldie’s novels and stories, and new ones published for the first time.