…And kisses on the rowan tree
The scarlet ulcers of the unseen Christ.

Sergei Esenin, ‘Autumn' (translated by Geoffrey Thurley)

In the big round stove they're burning up the trees.
It's hot all day in the tall kitchen. Outside
It's freezing, it's sunless as if a shadow was cast
By the ghosts of the trees that are burning, and the stove
Stays glowing all day, even when nobody's by.
They are burning the trees. All over mother Russia
The forests burn. Her face
Is darkened with smoke and labour, is grimed with soot.

They are not big trees but thin sticks of birch they're burning,
The graceful wings of pine and spruce, the blood-berried rowan.