Sergey Esenin
A Song About Bread

Here it is, the harsh brutality,
The full meaning of human suffering!
The sickle cuts the heavy ears of wheat
The way they slit throats of swans.

Since time immemorial, our field
Has known the morning shudder of August.
Straw is tied up in bundles,
Each bundle lies there like a yellow corpse.

Carts, like hearses, carry them
Into the crypt: a barn.
Like a deacon, the driver,
Barking at the mare, heeds the funeral rites.

After that, with care, without anger,
Their heads are laid on the ground
And little bones are pummeled
Out of their thin bodies with chains.

No one ever thinks
That straw is also flesh.
The bones are shoved in the mouth of the cannibal mill
That grinds them with its teeth.

And then, fermenting the dough,
They bake piles of tasty viands...
That’s when the whitish venom enters the jug
Of the stomach to lay eggs of spite.

Condensing all the beatings into a loaf,
Distilling the reapers’ cruelty into redolent brew,
It poisons the millstones of intestines
Of those who eat this straw meat.

And the charlatan, the murderer, and the villain
Whistle like autumn across the entire country...
All because the sickle cuts ears of wheat
The way they slit throats of swans. 

Translated by Anton Yakovlev