Nikolay Zabolotsky
Wedding

A ray of light slants through the windows;
The massive house stands in the dark.
Hotly the fire, glittering
In its stone casing, reaches out.
Splendidly the kitchen blazes.
Today, like golden cart horses,
Ripening purposefully there —
Women, loaves, and pies.
One pie coyly beams
Like the very source of life.
Over it, scrubbed blue, a chicken
Curses its youth.
It has closed its childlike eyes,
It’s many-colored brow is furrowed,
And laid its drowsy little body down
In an earthenware table coffin.
No priest booms mass over it,
Cleaving the air with his cross.
No cuckoo serenades it
With his deceitful song.
To the sound of cabbages it is chained,
In tomatoes it is dressed,
While celery, slender-limbed, descends
Over it like a crucifix.
Thus, in the bloom of its youth — it takes its rest,
A midget, pitiful amongst men.

The clock strikes. Night is here.
The feast is hot and passionate.
It’s more than the carafe can bear
To hold its fiery neck up straight.
A large flock of fleshy dames
Sits round glittering in feathers,
And threadbare ermine wreathes
Their bosoms, battening
On the sweat of centenarian queens.
They eat sweetmeat, rich and sticky,
Wheeze with unrequited passion,
And letting out their bellies, press against
The crockery and bouquets
Gunshot-straight, their stiff,
Baldheaded spouses sit,
Scarcely able to lift their heads
Over the fat trenches of flesh.
And breaking through the crystal -
Ware’s diverse monotony,
Morality soars, fluttering its little wings,
Like a dream of earthly bliss.

Oh, pure being, have you no shame?
How does your virtue profit by
This bridegroom hitched thus to his bride,
And forgetful of the thundering hooves?
His mobile face still
Bears traces of the ceremony,
The gold ring on his finger
Glitters hotheadedly,
And the priest, witness of all such nights,
Spreading his visorlike beard,
Towers above the dancing crowd,
A large guitar over his shoulder.
Strike up, guitar! Spread, circle, spread!
The weighty glasses roar.
The priest shudders, lets out a howl,
Suddenly strikes the golden strings!
And raising a last cup
To the guitar’s metallic voice,
Frenzied couples whirl
Into the mirrors’ bleak abyss.
And after them, past ambushes,
Crazed by the hue and cry,
The massive house, wiggling its behind,
Flies off into space, into life,
Where there’s the awesome dream of silence,
Gray hordes of factories,
And the law of labor and creation
Bestrides the encampments of the nations.

Translated by Daniel Weissbort