Across the Winter Steppe

To you, crossing the winter steppe,

Welcome to the Storm Post Office. Late 1920, in the eastern countryside: a sheet of cream, coarse-fibred paper, a tall hand-inked serif headline standing at the top, and beneath it blue-green grasses and a winter horizon, etched as if with a fine needle. In one corner is woven a dark green, shawl-like pattern, with a tiny ochre parcel docket and a red round seal of the sender’s own.

A poet left eight lines for a snowbound field at night: “What a wondrous picture, how dear it is to me: the white plain, the full moon, the light of the high heavens, the glittering snow, and, far off, a sleigh’s lonely run.” — Afanasy Fet, A Wondrous Picture (1842)

A winter field is so empty that the smallest sound seems close. Crossing it is slow, and that is all right; our letters are slow too. Someone is travelling far away and someone is writing here, perhaps beneath the same moon.

A smooth road for your sleigh

Storm Post Office

Late 1920 · The Don country