Innokenty Annensky
Black Spring

A half-holiday for the burial. Of course, they punish
the provincial copper bells for hours;
terribly the nose tilts up like a tallow candle
from the coffin. Does it wish to draw breath
from its torso in a mourning.suit? The last snow
fell sombrely — white, then the roads were bread-crumbed
with pebbles.
Poor winter, honeycombed with debts,
poured to corruption. Now the dumb, black springtime
must look into the chilly eye... from under the mould
on the roof-shingles, the liquid oatmeal
of the roads, the green stubble of life
on our faces! High in the splinter elm,
shrill the annual fledglings with their spiky necks.
They say to man that his road is mud,
his luck is rutted — there is nothing
sorrier than the marriage of two deaths.

Translated by Robert Lowell