Rushnik beautiful simple woven

thing you greet each tired traveler with fresh-baked bread, some salt to keep stories.
My hands, please ritual them dry rushnik, symmetry red string - a stranger, an end
a beginning, a friend - symbols sing a song I never knew I never knew. Be

bread rushnik, your thread hand-dyed, hands which know how to knead, joy knuckles into bread, out of bread how to place salt cellars their middles, little friendships of bread, before my people murdered to rewrite your people from our people, Soviet ideals rust red

blood-crusted corruption patterned like barbed-wire – oh rushnik, covering young dead you
still bond love to newlyweds, grace languages with many homes, symmetries
peace with memory, sun with scenery, gift endings our beginnings, wheatfields their winds,

shade under sunflowers, re-embroider us rushnik, re-imagine borders, distance,
ancestral memory. Oh, rushnik, our hands oh, rushnik I wish I was useful
like you, I wish I could tell you that what connects us is only beautiful like you

simple woven thing please teach us to break bread again