Chaim Semiatitski (Khayim Semiatitsky)
1.
On the downy snow-bed
nights lie and serenely sleep,
in stalls, cows doze,
their eyes full of moon
that slips into the stall
through a thin slit,
ruminating, ruminating,
they ask, bellowing,
what sort of world is this,
what – Ha?
Fish in the wavy, dark water
rise quietly to the surface,
swallow up a star
and vanish back into the depths.
2.
Silence,
wind is frozen to the earth.
Fields stretch out – pure mirrors.
Wherever you go, you step on bright star-studded sky,
every naked tree is today a birch,
stars pour from the sky
and lie down forlorn on the faultless snow.
3.
Winter-nights are — silver flutes
preceding multitudes, drunk with joy;
tops of trees are strewn with snow like blooms,
and on them stars grow.
On rivers that kiss the banks with frozen lips,
hares perch –
on their thick puffy tails
the moon is woven with beams.
With frightened eyes, they seek a bit of open river for a drink
and find none –
so they hie over whiteness into woods, tethered to the moon.
4.
Pathways blossomed white
and matched the fields,
trees laugh bright, like children dressed in new shirts,
stars shine, as if waking up from sleep,
and rivers – world’s weeping eyes –
lower icy eyelashes
against the dazzle of snow.
There likely was a fire late last night,
so the world rushed out in only its clear nightshirt.
5.
Evening,
on the back of a hillock
the sun lay like a red poppy
on a bundle of harvested rye,
and mosquitoes danced around its face.
Slowly, it slid down
over grainfields into the velvet woods –
and ears of corn silently lowered their heavy heads
because a sparkling moon
is already in the sky, like a sickle.
6.
Evenings are forlorn prayers
waiting for someone – someone to listen.
Trees appear to be stacks of evening,
raked up from the fields.
Horses slumber – necks on necks,
heads full of green meadows dreams.
At the tips of trees crows sleep,
blanketed by bits of cloud.
Grasses blindly nuzzle the earth
like hungry nursing children
at night seeking breasts.
7.
In the evening, like dark wine poured into bright transparent bottles,
night dripped down from the tip of the church crucifix into the day
and snuggled up so softly onto brooding straw roofs
like a cat, a lone cat, that stretches out on earth with a moon at its head.
Translated by Miri Koral
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