Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/98

 

temples, his face and his twisted neck were intertwined with a hundred wrinkles in a shapeless net, like the zig-zag lines that a moth eats out on the cover of an old book. At every jerk of the horse, the old man staggered, as if he were falling. It was difficult to believe that he was guiding the plough. It might rather be said that the plough was his support and that it was dragging him after it. Every moment that the horses stopped, the plough stopped also, and the old man struggled with an evil-sounding cough. His cough was curiously similar to the muffled echo which can be heard when the nails are being knocked into a coffin. But hardly had his cough abated than the horses were plodding on again, and the glistening iron cut its way into the earth, throwing up black clods to the right and to the left. The ploughman did not think of resting; his gaze hovered from the earth to the horizon, comparing the length of the paths which the plough and the sun still had to traverse. His powerful lips and toothless jaws were moving as though they were chewing something up. He chewed the words which broke heavily away from his mouth. The whisper of his voice was carried to me from time to time. The old man wan saying to himself: "My ears have grown deaf; my eyes have lost their sight. Merciful Jesus, have pity on me. . . . My feet can no longer move, my life is coming to an end. . . Merciful Jesus, have compassion on me!"