Nikolay Zabolotsky
The Wedding

A long ray gushes through the window,
the mighty house stands in the dark,
the fire spreads about, enkindled,
and flashing in its shirt of stone.
the kitchen sheds delightful heat.
Like golden draft horses, today
there ripen, not at all in vain,
baked loafs, and babas, and pirogs.
There, a coquettish kulebyaka
shines as the meaty heart of being.[i]
Above, turned blue from being rinsed,
a chick casts curses on his childhood.
He’s shut his childish little eyes,
furrowed his multicolored forehead,
and laid his sleepy little corpse
into a delftware table-casket.
Above him, no priest brayed a mass,
waving a cross up in the air;
for him, no cuckoo cared to sing
her guileful, crafty little song:
chained in the clap of cabbages,
he lay there, in tomatoes dressed;
above him, like a cross, descended
a dainty leg of celery.
And so he slumbered, in life’s prime,
a paltry midget among men.
The clock resounds. Night has arrived.
The feast is fervent, effervescent.
The wine decanter cannot keep
its fiery head from toppling over.
A giant flock of meaty women
sit in a circle, feathers shining,
and balding wreaths of ermine, greased
by sweating, century-old maids,
crown their enormous, heaving breasts.
They eat the densest of the sweets;
they wheeze in their voracious passion;
and, spreading free their bellies, press
close to their plates and to the flowers.
Their balding husbands sit erect,
straight as the whistle of a bullet,
their necks unable to escape
from fatty trenches of loose meat.
And breaking through the manifold
monotony of crystalware,
like some dream of a happy land,
a wedding speech’s wishful wand.
O birds of god, have you no shame?
And what does he add to your honor –
this groom, now tacked on to a bride,
who’s traded in the clap of hooves?
The forms of his conforming face
still bear a wedding-crown’s faint trace;
the golden ring upon his finger
glints brightly with a daring air.
Meanwhile, the priest, perennial guest,
his beard splayed out, like some great visor,
sits like a tower over the party,
with a guitar upon his shoulder.
Strike up, guitar! Widen the circle!
Ton-heavy goblets roar aloud.
Startled awake, the priest now bellows
and lashes at the golden strings.
To the guitar’s primordial thunder,
lifting their glasses to the sky,
the rabid couples hurtle blind
into the mirrors’ bare abysses.
And in their tracks, across the yards,
witless from incessant wailing,
the giant house, shaking its rump,
spins into the expanse of being.
And there – the awful dream of silence,
the graying hordes of factories,
and far above the masses’ stations –
the law of labor and creation.

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[i] A baba is a tall sweet cake often containing raisins; pirog is a general term for pie; a kulebyaka is also a pie – its filling can be fish, meat, or vegetable.

Translated by Boris Dralyuk