Arseny Tarkovsky
What Snow Smells Like

First snow has fallen, like the first
Still nervous steps and child’s first chortle.
You see? Unfurling, verst on verst
Upon the birches and the firs
The train of ice queen’s furs immortal?
As if from shaker all dispersed —
And yet tomorrow — fear the worst —
The snow by changes will be cursed.

From branches’ paws the winter dangles,
Infusing all with festive good,
And smell of Gogol-melon tangles
Is spirit of December wood.

In paper caps and hats with spangles
The cupboards scoured for rags as could,
And burnt-cork whiskers, rakish glasses,
Above a beetroot blush they hood,
Seized rolling pin with rush of blood
At door with box whose fill surpasses,
With Bengal fire in hands he’s stood.

With sundry types of all the classes
In upturned sheepskin coat goat passes,
With hemp beards, monkish brotherhood
On sledges harnessed to the people,
Amidst the laughter tolls dread bell
With burdened memories ’neath the steeple
The winter tired at last by knell.

In thrall to chill it won’t be sliding,
That mercury tower in afternoon,
The raspberry smoky din we’re riding,
And our departure will be soon —
We’ll sniff the clinic’s perfume wafting,
From endless snow it upward skips,
And glasslike, breath will then be grafting,
A frosty angel on our lips.

It won’t be March till thaw’s beginning,
A map’s kaleidoscopic spinning —
Here slope’s ascent and gully’s plunge,
Here vineyard, there a canyon’s lunge.
And leave the road — snow feet will sunder,
So, take a break if there’s no rush,
And tarry on the road to wonder:
In spring, there’s benzine-scented slush.

To all snow smells of benzine gush —
But nowhere quite like Moscow’s fringes.
And yes, a smell of blood impinges.
That smell has lingered in the mush
Since forties when snow’s bloody tinges
The years’ snowy deathly flush
Then upwards dragged to battle’s binges.

Depart now snowy spirit’s dinges
And now in place of milestones’ hush
The snow drifts smell of benzine’s gush.

Translated by Rupert Moreton