The Cow
The Cow - meaning Summary
Loss and Longing for Pasture
Yesenin's poem depicts an old, battered cow whose physical decline and quiet suffering are described with sympathetic restraint. She mourns a calf taken from her, imagines pastoral comforts, and faces imminent slaughter. The poem contrasts the animal's inner longing for a simple, green life with the harshness of human control and fate, evoking themes of loss, injustice, and the muted dignity of suffering.
Read Complete AnalysesDecrepit, with no more teeth, A scroll of years on her horns. The rough herdsman has been beating her On the fields she crossed. Her heart doesn't fancy noise; Mice are scratching in the corner. She is thinking sad thoughts About a white-legged calf. They never gave the mother her son. Her first joy came to naught. On a stake under an aspen The wind ruffled his skin. Soon, with a wheat rope, Mirroring her son's fate, They will put a noose on her neck And lead her to slaughter. Plaintively, sadly and thinly The horns will stick in the ground... She dreams of a white grove And fields of grass.
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