The Dead Man By Maxim Gorky

One evening I was sauntering along a soft, grey, dusty track
between two breast-high walls of grain. So narrow was the track
that here and there tar-besmeared cars were lying–tangled,
broken, and crushed–in the ruts of the cartway.

Field mice squeaked as a heavy car first swayed–then bent
forwards towards the sun-baked earth. A number of martins and
swallows were flitting in the sky, and constituting a sign of the
immediate proximity of dwellings and a river; though for the
moment, as my eyes roved over the sea of gold, they encountered
naught beyond a belfry rising to heaven like a ship’s mast, and
some trees which from afar looked like the dark sails of a ship.
Yes, there was nothing else to be seen save the brocaded,
undulating steppe where gently it sloped away south-westwards.
And as was the earth’s outward appearance, so was that of the
sky–equally peaceful.

Invariably, the steppe makes one feel like a fly on a platter.
Invariably, it inclines one to believe, when the centre of the
expanse is reached, that the earth lies within the compass of the
sky, with the sun embracing it, and the stars hemming it about
as, half-blinded, they stare at the sun’s beauty.

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