Selected Poetry / Избранное (англ.)

When I ran out into the street the sun was already high up in the sky and the entire village was bathed in golden sunlight. The village lads and girls, perhaps pulling on their white stockings more smoothly and wrapping their puttees around their feet more diligently under their bast shoes, were already out on the street.

From the opposite end, the head of the Sabantui with a flag in his hands (a stick with cloth tied to it) went from house to house collecting headscarves, cotton cloth and other similar items.

After the scarves and fabrics were collected, all the local folk – women, girls and kids – gathered on the meadow. A wrestling and racing competition followed. There were dozens of carts with nuts, sunflower seeds and gingerbread, white with red stripes, standing across the meadow.

Of all those things, the favorite gift a girl could get from a lad was, of course, the white gingerbread with red stripes, because there’s even a song about this gingerbread:

An eagle landed on the meadow

He’ll scare away the geese.

A striped white gingerbread from a fellow

For the girl would never go amiss.

There were also horse races and races in sacks. The headscarves were given away and the Sabantui festivities came to an end.

I can’t recall now how many days that holiday lasted. I only described one. Even if it lasted three or four days it seemed like one day to me.

I also have to add that I couldn’t run around and play that summer like I did the one before, because right before the beginning of spring a boy was born in uncle Sagdi’s family, and when mother was at work I always had to babysit the infant.

Yet another harvest season was here. The previous summer, when the whole village was at work, I played with the kids without a care in the world, but now they made me go out into the field with them to ride Sadri in the carriage (the baby’s full name was Sadretdin).

After the birth of this child, my adopted father continued to be affectionate with me, but my mom seldom spoke to me now except when she instructed me do some chores or work. This was how I lost the little love that has fallen to my lot.