Sergey Gorodetzky (1884–1921)

FIRST to sharpen the ax-flint they bent,

On the green they had gathered, unpent,

They had gathered beneath the green tent.

There where whitens a pale tree-trunk, naked,

There where whitens a pale linden trunk.

By the linden tree, by the young linden,

The linden trunk

White and naked.

At the fore, shaggy, lean, hoar of head,

Moves the wizard, as old as his runes;

He has lived over two thousand moons.

And the ax he inhumed.

From the far lakes he loomed

Long ago.

It is his: at the trunk

The first blow.

And two priestesses in their tenth Spring

To the old one they bring.

In their eyes

Terror lies.

Like the trunk their young bodies are bright,

Their wan white

Hath she only, the tender young linden.

One he took, one he led,

To the trunk roughly wed,

A white bride.

And the ax rose and hissed—

And a voice was upraised

And then died.

Thus the first blow was dealt to the trunk.

Others followed him, others upraised

That age-old bloody ax,

That keen flint-bladed ax:

The flesh once,

The tree twice

Fiercely cleaving.

And the trunk reddened fast

And it took on a face.

Lo,—this notch—is a nose,

This—an eye, for the nonce.

The flesh once,

The trunk twice—

Till all reddened the rise

And the grass crimsoned deep.

On the sod

In the red stains there lies

A new god.