Zamyatin is best known fro his pre-Brave New World, pre-1984 dystopia of communist totalitarianism We, written in 1921 against what would come to pass all too soon. But some of his earlier fables of Russian life are equally compelling, rigorously arranged, and, free from the official mechanical diction employed to appropriate effect in We, extremely poetic. 1918:

This is how it happens: the sun flies slower and slower until it hangs suspended, motionless. And everything is locked, imbedded for eternity in greenish glass. On a black stone near the shore, a seagull has spread its wings and poised for flight—and it will sit forever on that black stone. Over the chimney of the fat-rendering works a puff of smoke hangs, petrified. The quick, tow-headed urchin in the boat leans over the side to splash his hand in the water, and is caught, immobile, still. For a long moment, everything is made of glass. This moment is night. (p.89)

A glove on the hand. And now the glove is off and it lies on the counter, seemingly the same, yet different: unalive, the flesh and substance taken out of it. And so with Kortomikha behind the counter: the innards have been taken out of her, and her cheeks are sunken forever, and the chest is hollow. But her hat is pink, with flowers, and he pink hat makes it still more painful to look at her. Between the wrinkles at the corners of her lips there is a smile, and the smile is even more painful than the hat. (p.95)

The mouth of the bay between two cliffs was like a window. A window shutting out curious eyes with a white shade—white woolly fog. And all you could see was that behind it, something red was happening. (p.97)

A naked arm pulled aside the skin over the window. Behind the  window, in the sky—a pink bright slit, pink snow, pink smoke over the roofs. “But no! The night is over? No, it’s just a…” And the skin was dropped once more. But daily the slit grows wider, brighter. And now there are red strips outside, on the snow—and red strips inside,  in the hut, on the white curve of a leg with its pale-blue network of tiny veins, on the closed lids, the rusty head. The lids are held together with sweet glue. If only one need never open them… (pp.109-110)

One day—it had been long ago, everything had been long ago. One day Marey walked in the woods, his gun loaded with bullets, for bears, and suddenly a goose flew out from underfoot. He fired straight at the neck, the head was cut clean off. There was no head, but the goose still flapped his wings in flight; it fluttered a few yards more, and then dropped to the ground. Just so, as though still in mid-flight—Marey still flapped his wings, and Pelka hers. (p.131)