I gave him a bit of bread,
I gave him another bit.
He does not eat, he cries:
"Salt! Put salt on it!"
There is no salt in the house,
Never a pinch of it here.
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Nikolai Nekrassov's "The Soup Song"
(from Who Lives Happily in Russia?, transl. Avrahm Yarmolinsky, 1876)
Like the Turgenev story about cabbage soup, where a poor Russian woman, bereft of her only son, nevertheless forces soup down her throat so as not to waste the precious salt in it, this poem defines an almost unbelievable poverty--where one of earth's most abundant minerals is beyond the means of the poor.
There's nobody left but God....
Maybe He knows the cure:
Not a mouthful my little one takes.
Ah, he will die for sure.
I gave him a bit of bread,
I gave him another bit.
He does not eat, he cries:
"Salt! Put salt on it!"
There is no salt in the house,
Never a pinch of it here.
"Try some flour," said God.
God whispered it in my ear.
The little one took a bite,
He made a face as he bit.
He cried, the tiny boy:
"Put more salt on it!"
I floured the crust again,
My tears rained on the bread.
The little one ate it up,
The little son was fed.
She boasted of her ruse:
She had saved him, it appears.
Ah, mother, mother,
Those were salty tears!