Nikolay Klyuev
Old Believer jackdaw — walks in his black cassock...

Old Believer jackdaw — walks in his black cassock,
In bast shoes with frills and warm blue sash around him.
The dove’s in a caftan, the sparrow in a fur coat;
The hen wears a smockfrock with pecked holes all through it.
The goose in a tanned fur; the duck in the barnyard
Likes to flaunt grandfather’s pair of clumsy brogans.

Having safely roosted, when the dark is crow-black,
The pullets are sleeping — with their crops all tufted.
The soothsayer rooster wraps his shroud still tighter,
Counts the beads of stars and feels the grasses’ incense.

Graveyard: rotten wood there — glimmers like a candle,
The wood goblin makes a bast shoe near the forest,
And a cursed baby in the sedge is screeching...
Cocks wait for the dawn to trim its bright corona.

O, the dawn has many chests of festive dresses...
When the night is ending, chicken’s sleep is sweetest.
The nun jackdaw sleeps; the pea-thief sparrow’s sleeping...
But hardly the kokoshnik of the dawn starts rising
When the winged star-gazer blows his horn of magic:
‘Wake up, birds, the hour of praise now is striking!
And the sun is strewing on the hills and rivers
Golden millet, a feast for all those who have feathers!’

Translated by Vladimir Markov and Merrill Sparks