Nikolay Zabolotsky
Birds

Barely swaying
At a point where the winds cross,
Light birds hung
Like icon lamps amid the heavens.

Their tiny telescopic eyes
Peered straight down.
People crawled like bed-bugs,
And brooks meandered.

A mouse ran across a field,
And a bird pounced on it.
The little corpse, instantly disfigured,
Was dragged into the reeds.

And sitting there, the bird
Tore the mouse with its fingers,
And from its mouth a stream of water
Flowed onto the ground.

And shifting the tiny telescopes
Of its dimmed eyes,
The bird thought. A tarantas
Came rolling over the hill.

I was sitting in that tarantas,
As it sped across the field,
And my own wretched fate
Weighed on my heart as well.

Translated by Christopher R. Fortune