My Crystal Winter

There's not
too much to do
in the village in winter,

when the horse,
all the cattle and poultry
have already been fed and well watered
and the tidy small yard shoveled clean
and the kids
and my young pretty wife
all are cheerful and well satisfied.

I am lying above,
on the big Russian stove*,
lazy,
sleepy,
uncombed,
full and happy;

the izba* heated up
hot,
and the frost outside
in his vain spiteful rage
snaps his sharp icy teeth.

The river is frozen
and hibernating
under a half-meter layer of ice,
and the children are skating
with deafening cries
and sonorous laugh.


Winter,
O, my holly winter!
What a blessed and ripe time
of my long earthy life!

A tidy warm house,
laziness, cleanness,
my true beauty wife,
fatty thick shchi*,
meat and potatoes
today
and every God's day!

Certainly, then
Russian bath on each Saturday;
a clean linen shirt
after bath
and a slow small cut-glass
of crystal-cold vodka
with a few ruby cowberries,
a thin slice
of pinky-white fat
and a couple of salt milk mushrooms*,
crispy, spicy and fresh;

then
ice fishing and hunting,
an unhurried sleigh ride
through the still snowbound woods.

And what else
a calmed tired heart may desire!
Peace and quietness
day by day,
day by day,
every day...


Weeks will pass,
and another hot summer will come
with all its new concerns,
with young calves, heavy tillage,
hay-making, wood stocking
and abundant new yield.

Yet but now,

but right now
I am lying above on the big Russian stove
and the birch woods are crackling
soothing, somnolent, warm,
singing me
that so very old
and long known lullaby.

Early twilight flows in
through the patterned white window
just to stress
magic bliss of the passed winter day;
dogs are barking
at the far blinking stars
somewhere there in the dark
and the wind utters low
his long howls in the chimney.

And I find myself
sliding slowly right
into sweet viscous dreams
of my far and vague childhood
and eternal white winter...


Lord! O, Lord!
How blessed I am!

Thank you, Heavenly Father
for another day
of my peaceful being here
between the soft folds
of this lost
and forsaken world,

the fairyland
of my long
crystal
winter!
----------------------------------------------------------
Notes:
* a traditional Russian stove has a special wide place to sleep on the upper part of it, almost under the ceiling.
* izba - a Russian village log house
* shchi - cabbage soup, a Russian traditional dish
* salt milk mushrooms – a traditional Russian appetizer


Pavel Nichkov