| Deutsch and Yarmolinsky, comps. Modern Russian Poetry. 1921. | | | | An Izba Song | | By Nikolai Kluyev |
| | | THE STOVE is orphaned now; the old housewife has died, | |
| The trivet tells the pot with tears; their talk is harried. | |
| Behind the pane two trustful magpies, side by side, | |
| Chirp: “May is near, today the finches will be married, | |
| Smith Woodpecker with busy knocking has stripped his throat, | 5 |
| The mole—the sullen miner—creeps sunward, meekly leaving | |
| His tunneled, dark estate to bugs without a groat. | |
| The cranes are homing now, the sparrow, pert and thieving, | |
| Has heard the jackdaw blurt the secret of her egg.” | |
| The tangled mop awaits the bucket, limp and tired. | 10 |
| She thinks the unwashed porch for spuming suds must beg. | |
| How gay would be the splash of water, how desired | |
| A windowful of sunray tow,—an endless fairy-tale…. | |
| Behind the stove the house-sprite gabbles, quick and clever, | |
| Of the new tenant’s stillness within the churchyard’s pale, | 15 |
| Of crosses listening to things nameless forever, | |
| Of how the dark church-entrance lulls the linger dream. | |
| The house-sprite gabbles on above the bleak hour’s starkness. | |
| The peasant-hut is scowling; pewter eye agleam, | |
| The lonely window stares out at the thaw and darkness. | 20 | | | |
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