In our wooden dacha anything could happen. Lightning didn't strike— why cross yourself?

The lightning might have cropped the damp cabin, the puppies been abandoned and rain buckshotted the wing.

We dub the forest our porch, the spruce-bound moon our stove. Drying, the storm mumbles, like a freshly washed apron.

And when the whirlwind, grief, storms the well, the thunder claps for domesticity—fantastic!

The year guttered in kerosene like a gnat trapped in a lamp, and got up, a gray-blue star, sluggish and wet.

Old, tremulous, fretful, it peeks into the window's parenthesis, moistening the pillow where it will bury its tears.

How can we cheer up a grump who never laughs, or draw out the sorrow that goes unheard by a summer in oblivion?

The forest is all draped in lead. Burdock, graying, burst into sobs. Your beauty, like the day's, rests in fitfulness.