Nikolay Nekrasov — Morning

You're unhappy, sick at heart:

Oh, I know it-here such sickness isn't rare.

Nature can but mirror

The surrounding poverty.

All is ever drear and dismal,

Pastures, fields, and meadows,

Wet and drowsy jackdaws

Resting on the peaked haystacks;

Here's a drunken peasant driving

His collapsing nag

Into far-off blueish mists,

Such a gloomy sky . . . It makes one weep!

The rich city is no better, though:

The same storm clouds race across the sky;

It's hard on the nerves-steel shovels

Scraping, screeching as they clean the streets

Work's beginning everywhere;

From the fire tower an alarm goes up;

A condemned man's brought outside

Where the executioners already wait.

At the break of day a prostitute is hurrying

Home from someone's bed;

Officers inside a hired carriage

Leave the city-there will be a duel.

Shopkeepers have roused themselves

And they rush to sit behind their counters:

All day long they need to swindle

If they want to eat their fill at night.

Listen! Cannon fire from the fortress!

There's a flood endangering the capital . . .

Someone's died: Upon a scarlet cushion 

Lies a first-class Anna decoration.

Now a yardman beats a thief-he got him!

Geese are driven out to slaughter;

From an upper floor the crackle

Of a shot-another suicide. . .