More nostalgia for some lost Russia (c. 1910) :
Who knows, at the mention of 'farewell,'
What separation awaits us,
What the cockscrow augurs
When flames glow on the acropolis,
And in the dawn of some new life
While an ox chews lazily in his shed,
Why the cock, the herald of new life,
Beats his wings on the town's walls?
--Osip Mandelstam, "Tristia"
