Three poems by Mark Strand (1934–2014)

The End

Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.


The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter

It had been a long day at the office and a long ride back to the small apartment where I
lived. When I got there I flicked on the light and saw on the table an envelope with my
name on it. Where was the clock? Where was the calendar? The handwriting was my
father’s, but he had been dead for forty years. As one might, I began to think that
maybe, just maybe, he was alive, living a secret life somewhere nearby. How else to explain the envelope? To steady myself, I sat down, opened it, and pulled out the letter.
“Dear Son,” was the way it began. “Dear Son” and then nothing.


Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.



Mark Strand, "The End," from The Continuous Life, Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
Mark Strand, "The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter," Poetry, January 2011.
Mark Strand, "Keeping Things Whole," from Selected Poems, Alfred A. Knopf, 1979, 1980, 2002.
All poems accessed at The Poetry Foundation.

Excerpt, Água Viva by Clarice Lispector (trans. Stefan Tobler)

But I don't know how to capture what's happening now except by living everything that happens to me here and now and whatever it may be. I let the free horse run fiery in its pure noble joy. I, who run nervously and only reality delimits me. And when the day reaches its end I hear the crickets and become entirely full and unintelligible. Then come the early hours bulging full of thousands of blaring little birds. And each thing that happens to me I live it here by noting it down. Because I want to feel in my probing hands the living and quivering nerve of the today.

Beyond thought I reach a state. I refuse to divide it up into words--and what I cannot and do not want to express ends up being the most secret of my secrets. I know that I'm scared of the moments in which I don't use thought and that's a momentary state that is difficult to reach, and which, entirely secret, no longer uses the words with which thoughts are produced. Is not using words to lose your identity? is it getting lost in the harmful essential shadows?

I lose the identity of the world inside myself and exist without guarantees. I achieve whatever is achievable but I live the unachievable and the meaning of me and the world and you isn't obvious. It's fantastic, and I handle myself in these moments with immense delicacy. Is God a form of being? the abstraction that materializes in the nature of all that exists? My roots are in the divine shadows. Drowsy roots. Wavering in the dark shadows.


-- Clarice Lispector, Água Viva, trans. Stefan Tobler, New Directions Press, copyrights 1973 (the Heirs of Clarice Lispector) and 2012 (Stefan Tobler, translation, and Benjamin Moser, introduction), p. 64.

"What Did You Learn in School Today?" performed by Pete Seeger, 1964

-- Pete Seeger, "What Did You Learn in School Today?" written by Tom Paxton, performed on the "Tonight in Person" show (BBC), 1964. Accessed via YouTube.

Excerpt, "The Retreat from Gettysburg," Brig. Gen. John Imboden, C.S.A., 1887

After dark I set out from Cashtown to gain the head of the column during the night. My orders had been peremptory that there should be no halt for any cause whatever. If an accident should happen to any vehicle, it was immediately to be put out of the road and abandoned. The column moved rapidly, considering the rough roads and the darkness, and from almost every wagon for many miles issued heart-rending wails of agony. For four hours I hurried forward on my way to the front, and in all that time I was never out of hearing of the groans and cries of the wounded and dying. Scarcely one in a hundred had received adequate surgical aid, owing to the demands on the hard-working surgeons from still worse cases that had to be left behind. Many of the wounded in the wagons had been without food for thirty-six hours. 

Their torn and bloody clothing, matted and hardened, was rasping the tender, inflamed, and still oozing wounds. Very few of the wagons had even a layer of straw in them, and all were without springs. The road was rough and rocky from the heavy washings of the preceding day. The jolting was enough to have killed strong men, if long exposed to it. From nearly every wagon as the teams trotted on, urged by whip and shout, came such cries and shrieks as these:

'O God! Why can't I die!'

'My God! Will no one have mercy and kill me!'

'Stop! Oh! For God's sake, stop just for one minute; take me out and leave me to die on the roadside.'

'I am dying! I am dying! My poor wife, my dear children, what will become of you?'

Some were simply moaning; some were praying, and others uttering the most fearful oaths and execrations that despair and agony could wring from them; while a majority, with a stoicism sustained by sublime devotion to the cause they fought for, endured without complaint unspeakable tortures, and even spoke words of cheer and comfort to their unhappy comrades of less will or more acute nerves. Occasionally a wagon would be passed from which only low, deep moans could be heard. No help could be rendered to any of the sufferers. No heed could be given to any of their appeals. Mercy and duty to the many forbade the loss of a moment in the vain effort then and there to comply with the prayers of the few. On! On! we must move on. The storm continued, and the darkness was appalling. There was no time even to fill a canteen with water for a dying man; for, except the drivers and the guards, all were wounded and utterly helpless in that vast procession of misery. During this one night I realized more of the horrors of war than I had in all the two preceding years.

-- Brig. Gen. John Imboden (1823-1895), Confederate States of America, from "The Confederate Retreat from Gettysburg," 1887.

"The Grapes of Wrath" - Tom Joad's "I'll be there" speech

-- from "The Grapes of Wrath," dir. John Ford (based on The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, 1939), 20th Century Fox, 1940. Tom Joad played by Henry Fonda.

"Vespers" by Louise Glück

In your extended absence, you permit me 
use of earth, anticipating 
some return on investment. I must report 
failure in my assignment, principally 
regarding the tomato plants. 
I think I should not be encouraged to grow 
tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold 
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come 
so often here, while other regions get 
twelve weeks of summer. All this 
belongs to you: on the other hand, 
I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots 
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart 
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly 
multiplying in the rows. I doubt 
you have a heart, in our understanding of 
that term. You who do not discriminate 
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence, 
immune to foreshadowing, you may not know 
how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf, 
the red leaves of the maple falling 
even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible 
for these vines.


-- Louise Glück, "Vespers" ["In your extended absence, you permit me"], The Wild Iris, The Ecco Press, 1992.

"Anywhere on this Road" by Lhasa de Sela

-- Lhasa de Sela, "Anywhere on this Road," The Living Road, Audiogram: 2003.

Jeremy Scahill at 2013 Socialism Conference

-- Jeremy Scahill, investigative journalist, author, filmmaker

Four woodblock prints by Kobayashi Kiyochika, c. 1880

Sumida River by Night (1881)

  Night at Nihonbashi (1881)

Night Stalls at Asakusa (1881)

Fireflies at Ochanomizu (1880)

-- Kobayashi Kiyochika (Japan, 1847-1915), from exhibition "Kiyochika: Master of the Night," at Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, DC, March 29–July 27, 2014. All artworks from Robert O. Muller Collection.

I Take Back Everything I've Said by Nicanor Parra

Before I go 
I'm supposed to get a last wish: 
Generous reader 
                        burn this book 
It's not at all what I wanted to say 
Though it was written in blood 
It's not what I wanted to say.

No lot could be sadder than mine 
I was defeated by my own shadow: 
My words took vengeance on me.

Forgive me, reader, good reader 
If I cannot leave you
With a warm embrace, I leave you 
With a forced and sad smile.

Maybe that's all I am 
But listen to my last word: 
I take back everything I've said. 
With the greatest bitterness in the world 
I take back everything I've said.


-- Nicanor Parra, "I Take Back Everything I've Said," trans. Miller Williams, from The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, eds. Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris, Words Without Borders, 2010, pp. 210-11.

Phil Ochs, "The Ballad of William Worthy"

-- Phil Ochs, "The Ballad of William Worthy," 1964, Elektra Records.

from "Murder by the Book" by Rex Stout, 1951

We were getting reports by phone from Saul and Fred and Orrie, and Friday a little before six Saul came in person. The only reason I wouldn't vote for Saul Panzer for President of the United States is that he would never dress the part. How he goes around New York, almost anywhere, in that faded brown cap and old brown suit, without attracting attention as not belonging, I will never understand. Wolfe has never given him an assignment that he didn't fill better than anyone else could except me, and my argument is why not elect him President, buy him a suit and hat, and see what happens?

-- Rex Stout, Murder by the Book, New York: Bantam, e-book, 2010.

"Sometimes a Man Stands Up During Supper" by Rainer Maria Rilke

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.
 
And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.


-- Rainer Maria Rilke, "Sometimes a Man Stands Up During Supper," trans. Robert Bly, collected in The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, eds. Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris, Words without Borders/HarperCollins, 2010, p. 12.

Excerpt, "Nazi Literature in the Americas" by Roberto Bolaño

Silvio Salvático

Buenos Aires, 1901--Buenos Aires, 1994

As a young man Salvático advocated, among other things, the re-establishment of the Inquisition; corporal punishment in public; a permanent war against the Chileans, the Paraguayans, or the Bolivians as a kind of gymnastics for the nation; polygamy; the extermination of the Indians to prevent further contamination of the Argentinian race; curtailing the rights of any citizen with Jewish blood; a massive influx of migrants from the Scandinavian countries in order to effect a progressive lightening of the national skin color, darkened by years of promiscuity with the indigenous population; life-long writer's grants; the abolition of tax on artists' incomes; the creation of the largest air force in South America; the colonization of Antarctica; and the building of new cities in Patagonia.

He was a soccer player and a Futurist.

From 1920 to 1929, in addition to frequenting the literary salons and fashionable cafes, he wrote and published more than twelve collections of poems, some of which won municipal and provincial prizes. From 1930 on, burdened by a disastrous marriage and numerous offspring, he worked as a gossip columnist and copy-editor for various newspapers in the capital, hung out in dives, and practiced the art of the novel, which stubbornly declined to reveal its secrets to him. Three titles resulted: Fields of Honor (1936), about semi-secret challenges and duels in a spectral Buenos Aires; The French Lady (1949), a story of prostitutes with hearts of gold, tango singers, and detectives; and The Eyes of the Assassin (1962), a curious precursor to the psycho-killer movies of the seventies and eighties. 

He died in an old-age home in Villa Luro, his worldly possessions consisting of a single suitcase full of books and unpublished manuscripts.

His books were never republished. His manuscripts were probably thrown out with the trash or burned by the orderlies.


-- Roberto Bolaño, "Silvio Salvático," in chapter "Forerunners and Figures of the Anti-Enlightenment," from Nazi Literature in the Americas, trans. Chris Andrews, New Directions, 2008, pp. 47-48.

"The Snowfall Is So Silent" by Miguel de Unamuno

The snowfall is so silent,
so slow,
bit by bit, with delicacy
it settles down on the earth
and covers over the fields.
The silent snow comes down
white and weightless;
snowfall makes no noise,
falls as forgetting falls,
flake after flake.
It covers the fields gently
while frost attacks them
with its sudden flashes of white;
covers everything with its pure
and silent covering;
not one thing on the ground
anywhere escapes it.
And wherever it falls it stays,
content and gay,
for snow does not slip off
as rain does,
but it stays and sinks in.
The flakes are skyflowers,
pale lilies from the clouds,
that wither on earth.
They come down blossoming
but then so quickly
they are gone;
they bloom only on the peak,
above the mountains,
and make the earth feel heavier
when they die inside.
Snow, delicate snow,
that falls with such lightness
on the head,
on the feelings,
come and cover over the sadness
that lies always in my reason.


-- Miguel de Unamuno, "The Snowfall is So Silent," from Roots and Wings: Poetry from Spain 1900-1975, trans. Robert Bly, ed. Hardie St. Martin, pub. Harper and Row, 1976. Accessed at Poets.org.

From Roots and Wings: Poetry from Spain 1900-1975, translated by Robert Bly, edited by Hardie St. Martin, and published by Harper & Row. © 1976 by Hardie St. Martin. Used with permission. All rights reserved. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15882#sthash.nrDWzsOB.dpuf

From Roots and Wings: Poetry from Spain 1900-1975, translated by Robert Bly, edited by Hardie St. Martin, and published by Harper & Row. © 1976 by Hardie St. Martin. Used with permission. All rights reserved. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15882#sthash.nrDWzsOB.dpuf

The snowfall is so silent, so slow, bit by bit, with delicacy it settles down on the earth and covers over the fields. The silent snow comes down white and weightless; snowfall makes no noise, falls as forgetting falls, flake after flake. It covers the fields gently while frost attacks them with its sudden flashes of white; covers everything with its pure and silent covering; not one thing on the ground anywhere escapes it. And wherever it falls it stays, content and gay, for snow does not slip off as rain does, but it stays and sinks in. The flakes are skyflowers, pale lilies from the clouds, that wither on earth. They come down blossoming but then so quickly they are gone; they bloom only on the peak, above the mountains, and make the earth feel heavier when they die inside. Snow, delicate snow, that falls with such lightness on the head, on the feelings, come and cover over the sadness that lies always in my reason. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15882#sthash.QrqS84B7.dpuf

The Snowfall Is So Silent

  by Miguel de Unamuno
translated by Robert Bly

The snowfall is so silent,
so slow,
bit by bit, with delicacy
it settles down on the earth
and covers over the fields.
The silent snow comes down
white and weightless; 
snowfall makes no noise,
falls as forgetting falls, 
flake after flake.
It covers the fields gently
while frost attacks them
with its sudden flashes of white;
covers everything with its pure
and silent covering;
not one thing on the ground
anywhere escapes it.
And wherever it falls it stays,
content and gay,
for snow does not slip off 
as rain does,
but it stays and sinks in.
The flakes are skyflowers,
pale lilies from the clouds,
that wither on earth.
They come down blossoming
but then so quickly
they are gone;
they bloom only on the peak,
above the mountains,
and make the earth feel heavier
when they die inside.
Snow, delicate snow,
that falls with such lightness 
on the head,
on the feelings,
come and cover over the sadness
that lies always in my reason.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15882#sthash.QrqS84B7.dpuf

The Snowfall Is So Silent

  by Miguel de Unamuno
translated by Robert Bly

The snowfall is so silent,
so slow,
bit by bit, with delicacy
it settles down on the earth
and covers over the fields.
The silent snow comes down
white and weightless; 
snowfall makes no noise,
falls as forgetting falls, 
flake after flake.
It covers the fields gently
while frost attacks them
with its sudden flashes of white;
covers everything with its pure
and silent covering;
not one thing on the ground
anywhere escapes it.
And wherever it falls it stays,
content and gay,
for snow does not slip off 
as rain does,
but it stays and sinks in.
The flakes are skyflowers,
pale lilies from the clouds,
that wither on earth.
They come down blossoming
but then so quickly
they are gone;
they bloom only on the peak,
above the mountains,
and make the earth feel heavier
when they die inside.
Snow, delicate snow,
that falls with such lightness 
on the head,
on the feelings,
come and cover over the sadness
that lies always in my reason.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15882#sthash.QrqS84B7.dpuf

From "Nevsky Prospect" by Nikolai Gogol

But before we say who Lieutenant Pirogov was, it would be as well to describe the society in which Pirogov moved. There are officers who make up a kind of middle class in the society of St. Petersburg. At soirees, at dinners given by a councilor of state or an actual councilor of state who has attained this rank after forty years of toil, you will always meet one of these. Several pale daughters as completely colorless as St. Petersburg, some of whom are over-ripe, a tea-table, a piano, dancing in the drawing-room--all this is inseparable from the bright epaulet which shines in the lamplight between a well-behaved blonde and the black dress-coat of a brother or a friend of the family. These cold-blooded young women are very hard to move or make laugh; for this one must use great art, or more exactly, no art at all. You must speak neither too cleverly nor too wittily so that the trifles which all women love are included. In this one must give the above-mentioned gentlemen their due. They have a special gift for listening to these colorless beauties and making them laugh. Exclamations drowned in laughter: "Oh, do stop it! Aren't you ashamed to make such jokes!" are often their highest reward. In the upper classes one meets them rarely, or rather, never. They are driven thence by what this class of society calls the aristocrats; however they are considered educated and well brought-up people. They like to discuss literature; they praise Bulgarin, Pushkin and Grech and speak with scorn and barbed witticisms about A.A. Orlov. They never miss a single public lecture, whether it is about book-keeping or even about forestry. You will always meet one of them at the theater whatever the piece, even if some sort of "Filatka" is on, which is an insult to their discerning taste. They are always at the theater. They are the most useful people for the theater directors. They are particularly fond of good verse in the drama and of calling loudly on the actors; many of them when taking the examinations for the civil service, or preparing for it, finally keep a cabriolet and pair. Then their circle of acquaintance widens. At last they attain to marriage with a merchant's daughter who can play the piano and has a hundred thousand or thereabouts in ready cash and a heap of bearded relatives: but they cannot reach this honored state until they have at least become colonels; because Russian beards, despite the fact that they still give off an odor of cabbage will by no means see their daughters marry anyone save generals or at the least colonels.

These are the main characteristics of young men of this kind. But Lieutenant Pirogov possessed a large number of talents which belonged to him personally. He declaimed verses wonderfully from "Dimitri Donskoy" and "The Misfortune of Being Clever," and had a special gift for making smoke-rings with his pipe so well that he could suddenly thread about ten of them on one another. He knew how to tell pleasant anecdotes about how a field-gun is a field-gun and a howitzer a howitzer. Indeed, it is rather difficult to give a list of all the talents with which fate had rewarded Pirogov. He liked to discuss actresses and dancers but no longer expressed himself so crudely on the subject as a young ensign does. He was very pleased with his rank, to which he had only recently been promoted, and although sometimes he would say as he stretched out on the divan: "Oh, oh! Vanity! All is vanity! What if I am a lieutenant?" yet secretly his new dignity was very flattering to him: he often tried to give a covert hint of it in conversation, and once when he came across a copyist clerk in the street who seemed rude to him, he immediately stopped him and made him see in a few curt words that he had a lieutenant to deal with and not any other officer--and he tried to express this and more eloquently because at that moment two rather good-looking ladies were passing. Pirogov, generally, had a passion for everything elegant and encouraged the painter Piskarev; though, indeed, this might have been due to a desire to see his virile features in a portrait. But enough of Pirogov's qualities. Man is such a wonderful being that one can never enumerate all his good qualities and the more deeply you look into him the more new peculiarities you find and their description might be endless.


-- Nikolai Gogol, "The Nevsky Prospect," 1835, collected in Diary of a Madman and Other Stories, Dover Thrift Editions.

"A Day in the Country" by Anton Chekhov

Between eight and nine o'clock in the morning.

A dark leaden-colored mass is creeping over the sky towards the sun. Red zigzags of lightning gleam here and there across it. There is a sound of far-away rumbling. A warm wind frolics over the grass, bends the trees, and stirs up the dust. In a minute there will be a spurt of May rain and a real storm will begin.

Fyokla, a little beggar-girl of six, is running through the village, looking for Terenty the cobbler. The white-haired, barefoot child is pale. Her eyes are wide-open, her lips are trembling.

"Uncle, where is Terenty?" she asks every one she meets. No one answers. They are all preoccupied with the approaching storm and take refuge in their huts. At last she meets Silanty Silitch, the sacristan, Terenty's bosom friend. He is coming along, staggering from the wind.

"Uncle, where is Terenty?"

"At the kitchen-gardens," answers Silanty.

The beggar-girl runs behind the huts to the kitchen-gardens and there finds Terenty; the tall old man with a thin, pock-marked face, very long legs, and bare feet, dressed in a woman's tattered jacket, is standing near the vegetable plots, looking with drowsy, drunken eyes at the dark storm-cloud. On his long crane-like legs he sways in the wind like a starling-cote.

"Uncle Terenty!" the white-headed beggar-girl addresses him. "Uncle, darling!"

Terenty bends down to Fyokla, and his grim, drunken face is overspread with a smile, such as come into people's faces when they look at something little, foolish, and absurd, but warmly loved.

"Ah! servant of God, Fyokla," he says, lisping tenderly, "where have you come from?"

"Uncle Terenty," says Fyokla, with a sob, tugging at the lapel of the cobbler's coat. "Brother Danilka has had an accident! Come along!"

"What sort of accident? Ough, what thunder! Holy, holy, holy…. What sort of accident?"

"In the count's copse Danilka stuck his hand into a hole in a tree, and he can't get it out. Come along, uncle, do be kind and pull his hand out!"

"How was it he put his hand in? What for?"

"He wanted to get a cuckoo's egg out of the hole for me."

"The day has hardly begun and already you are in trouble…."Terenty shook his head and spat deliberately. "Well, what am I to do with you now? I must come… I must, may the wolf gobble you up, you naughty children! Come, little orphan!"

Terenty comes out of the kitchen-garden and, lifting high his long legs, begins striding down the village street. He walks quickly without stopping or looking from side to side, as though he were shoved from behind or afraid of pursuit. Fyokla can hardly keep up with him.

They come out of the village and turn along the dusty road towards the count's copse that lies dark blue in the distance. It is about a mile and a half away. The clouds have by now covered the sun, and soon afterwards there is not a speck of blue left in the sky. It grows dark.

"Holy, holy, holy…" whispers Fyokla, hurrying after Terenty. The first rain-drops, big and heavy, lie, dark dots on the dusty road. A big drop falls on Fyokla's cheek and glides like a tear down her chin.

"The rain has begun," mutters the cobbler, kicking up the dust with his bare, bony feet. "That's fine, Fyokla, old girl. The grass and the trees are fed by the rain, as we are by bread. And as for the thunder, don't you be frightened, little orphan. Why should it kill a little thing like you?"

As soon as the rain begins, the wind drops. The only sound is the patter of rain dropping like fine shot on the young rye and the parched road.

"We shall get soaked, Fyokla," mutters Terenty. "There won't be a dry spot left on us….Ho-ho, my girl! It's run down my neck! But don't be frightened, silly….The grass will be dry again, the earth will be dry again, and we shall be dry again. There is the same sun for us all."

A flash of lightning, some fourteen feet long, gleams above their head. There is a loud peal of thunder, and it seems to Fyokla that something big, heavy, and round is rolling over the sky and tearing it open, exactly over her head.

"Holy, holy, holy…" says Terenty, crossing himself. "Don't be afraid, little orphan! It is not from spite that it thunders."

Terenty's and Fyokla's feet are covered with lumps of heavy, wet clay. It is slippery and difficult to walk, but Terenty strides on more and more rapidly. The weak little beggar-girl is breathless and ready to drop.

But at last they go into the count's copse. The washed trees, stirred by a gust of wind, drop a perfect waterfall upon them. Terenty stumbles over stumps and begins to slacken his pace.

"Whereabouts is Danilka?" he asks. "Lead me to him."

Fyokla leads him into a thicket, and, after going a quarter of a mile, points to Danilka. Her brother, a little fellow of eight, with hair as red as ochre and a pale sickly face, stands leaning against a tree, and, with his head on one side, looking sideways at the sky. In one hand he holds his shabby old cap, the other is hidden in an old lime tree. The boy is gazing at the stormy sky, and apparently not thinking of his trouble. Hearing footsteps and seeing the cobbler he gives sickly smile and says:

"A terrible lot of thunder, Terenty….I've never heard so much thunder in all my life."

"And where is your hand?"

"In the hole….Pull it out, please, Terenty!"

The wood had broken at the edge of the hole and jammed Danilka's hand: he could push it farther in, but could not pull it out. Terenty snaps off the broken piece, and the boy's hand, red and crushed, is released.

"It's terrible how it's thundering," the boy says again, rubbing his hand. "What makes it thunder, Terenty?"

"One cloud runs against the other," answers the cobbler. The party come out of the copse, and walk along the edge of it towards the darkened road. The thunder gradually abates, and its rumbling is heard far away beyond the village.

"The ducks flew by here the other day, Terenty," says Danilka, still rubbing his hand. "They must be nesting in the Gniliya Zaimishtcha marshes….Fyokla, would you like me to show you a nightingale's nest?"

"Don't touch it, you might disturb them," says Terenty, wringing the water out of his cap. "The nightingale is a singing-bird, without sin. He has had a voice given him in his throat, to praise God and gladden the heart of man. It's a sin to disturb him."

"What about the sparrow?"

"The sparrow doesn't matter, he's a bad, spiteful bird. He is like a pickpocket in his ways. He doesn't like man to be happy. When Christ was crucified it was the sparrow brought nails to the Jews, and called 'alive! alive!' "

A bright patch of blue appears in the sky.

"Look!" says Terenty. "An ant-heap burst open by the rain! They've been flooded, the rogues!"

They bend over the ant-heap. The downpour has damaged it; the insects are scurrying to and fro in the mud, agitated, and busily trying to carry away their drowned companions.

"You needn't be in such a taking, you won't die of it!" says Terenty, grinning. "As soon as the sun warms you, you'll come to your senses again….It's a lesson to you, you stupids. You won't settle on low ground another time."

They go on.

"And here are some bees," cries Danilka, pointing to the branch of a young oak tree.

The drenched and chilled bees are huddled together on the branch. There are so many of them that neither bark nor leaf can be seen. Many of them are settled on one another.

"That's a swarm of bees," Terenty informs them. "They were flying looking for a home, and when the rain came down upon them they settled. If a swarm is flying, you need only sprinkle water on them to make them settle. Now if, say, you wanted to take the swarm, you would bend the branch with them into a sack and shake it, and they all fall in."

Little Fyokla suddenly frowns and rubs her neck vigorously. Her brother looks at her neck, and sees a big swelling on it.

"Hey-hey!" laughs the cobbler. "Do you know where you got that from, Fyokla, old girl? There are Spanish flies on some tree in the wood. The rain has trickled off them, and a drop has fallen on your neck—that's what has made the swelling."

The sun appears from behind the clouds and floods the wood, the fields, and the three friends with its warm light. The dark menacing cloud has gone far away and taken the storm with it. The air is warm and fragrant. There is a scent of bird-cherry, meadowsweet, and lilies-of-the-valley.

"That herb is given when your nose bleeds," says Terenty, pointing to a woolly-looking flower. "It does good."

They hear a whistle and a rumble, but not such a rumble as the storm-clouds carried away. A goods train races by before the eyes of Terenty, Danilka, and Fyokla. The engine, panting and puffing out black smoke, drags more than twenty vans after it. Its power is tremendous. The children are interested to know how an engine, not alive and without the help of horses, can move and drag such weights, and Terenty undertakes to explain it to them:

"It's all the steam's doing, children…. The steam does the work…. You see, it shoves under that thing near the wheels, and it…you see…it works…"

They cross the railway line, and, going down from the embankment, walk towards the river. They walk not with any object, but just at random, and talk all the way…. Danilka asks questions, Terenty answers them…

Terenty answers all his questions, and there is no secret in Nature which baffles him. He knows everything. Thus, for example, he knows the names of all the wild flowers, animals, and stones. He knows what herbs cure diseases, he has no difficulty in telling the age of a horse or a cow. Looking at the sunset, at the moon, or the birds, he can tell what sort of weather it will be next day. And indeed, it is not only Terenty who is so wise. Silanty Silitch, the innkeeper, the market-gardener, the shepherd, and all the villagers, generally speaking, know as much as he does. These people have learned not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the river bank. Their teachers have been the birds themselves, when they sang to them, the sun when it left a glow of crimson behind it at setting, the very trees, and wild herbs.

Danilka looks at Terenty and greedily drinks in every word. In spring, before one is weary of the warmth and the monotonous green of the fields, when everything is fresh and full of fragrance, who would not want to hear about the golden may-beetles, about the cranes, about the gurgling streams, and the corn mounting into ear?

The two of them, the cobbler and the orphan, walk about the fields, talk unceasingly, and are not weary. They could wander about the world endlessly. They walk, and in their talk of the beauty of the earth do not notice the frail little beggar-girl tripping after them. She is breathless and moves with a lagging step. There are tears in her eyes; she would be glad to stop these inexhaustible wanderers, but to whom and where can she go? She has no home or people of her own; whether she likes it or not, she must walk and listen to their talk.

Towards midday, all three sit down on the river bank. Danilka takes out of his bag a piece of bread, soaked and reduced to a mash, and they begin to eat. Terenty says a prayer when he has eaten the bread, then stretches himself on the sandy bank and falls asleep. While he is asleep, the boy gazes at the water, pondering. He has many different things to think of. He has just seen the storm, the bees, the ants, the train. Now, before his eyes, fishes are whisking about. Some are two inches long and more, others are no bigger than one's nail. A viper, with its head held high, is swimming from one bank to the other.

Only towards the evening our wanderers return to the village. The children go for the night to a deserted barn, where the corn of the commune used to be kept, while Terenty, leaving them, goes to the tavern. The children lie huddled together on the straw, dozing.

The boy does not sleep. He gazes into the darkness, and it seems to him that he is seeing all that he has seen in the day: the storm-clouds, the bright sunshine, the birds, the fish, lanky Terenty. The number of his impressions, together with exhaustion and hunger, are too much for him; he is as hot as though he were on fire, and tosses from side to side. He longs to tell someone all that is haunting him now in the darkness and agitating his soul, but there is no one to tell. Fyokla is too little and could not understand.

"I'll tell Terenty to-morrow," thinks the boy.

The children fall asleep thinking of the homeless cobbler, and, in the night, Terenty comes to them, makes the sign of the cross over them, and puts bread under their heads. And no one sees his love. It is seen only by the moon which floats in the sky and peeps caressingly through the holes in the wall of the deserted barn.


--Anton Chekhov, "A Day in the Country," 1886, accessed at 201 Stories by Anton Chekhov.