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# Sergey Yesenin’s 1920 poem “Sorokoust” about a foal running after a train
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/videli-li-vy-kak-bezhit-po-stepiam-v-tumanakh-ozernykh-kroias-zheleznoi-nozdrei-khrapia-na-lapakh-chugunnykh-poezd/
- Published: 2024-05-08T05:30:01.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T18:50:32.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Geography, Books, Nature

Have you seen  
How it runs across the steppes,  
Hiding in the lake mists,  
Snorting through an iron nostril,  
A train on cast-iron paws?  
And behind it  
Through the tall grass,  
As at a festival of desperate races,  
Flinging its slender legs up towards its head,  
Gallops a red-maned foal?  
Dear, dear, funny little fool,  
Where is he going, what is he chasing?  
Does he not know that living horses  
Have been defeated by the cavalry of steel?  
Does he not know that in the shining-less fields  
His running will not bring back that time  
When a pair of fair Russian steppe maidens  
Was given by the Pecheneg for a horse?  
Fate at the market has repainted things differently,  
Our reach of water, woken by the grinding of iron,  
And for thousands of poods of horse hide and meat  
They now buy a steam locomotive.

*Literal translation*

*From the poem "Sorokoust" \[Forty Masses\], Sergey Yesenin*, *1920*