Osip Mandelshtam - Selected Poems

There are orioles in the woods, and length of vowels
Is the sole measure in accentual verse.
But only once a year is nature lengthily protracted
And overflowing, as in Homer’s measure.

This day yawns like a caesura:
Quiet since morning, and arduous duration;
Oxen at pasture, and a golden indolence
To extract from the reed one whole note’s richness.

Nature is Roman, and mirrored in Rome.
We see its forms of civic grandeur
In transparent air, like a sky-blue circus,
In the forum of fields, in the colonnades of trees.

Nature is Roman, and it seems
Pointless to trouble any gods again:
There are sacrificial entrails to foretell war,
Slaves to keep silence, stones to build!

Sleeplessness. Homer. Taut sails.
I have counted half the catalogue of ships:
That caravan of cranes, that expansive host,
Which once rose above Hellas.

Like a wedge of cranes towards alien shores –
On the kings’ heads godlike spray –
Where are you sailing? Without Helen
What could Troy mean to you, Achaean men?

Both the sea and Homer – all is moved by love.
To whom shall I listen? Now Homer falls silent,
And a black sea, thunderous orator,
Breaks on my pillow with a roar.

Herds of horses gaily neigh or graze,
The valley rusts like Rome;
Time’s translucent rapids wash away
A classical Spring’s dry gold.

In Autumn as I tread the oak-leaves,
Thickly scattered on deserted paths,
I shall remember Caesar’s lovely profile:
Effeminate features, treacherous hook-nose.

Now Capitol and Forum are far away,
Nature is quietly fading;
Even on the earth’s rim I hear
The age of Augustus roll, a majestic orb.

When I am old may my sadness gleam.
I was born in Rome; it has come back to me;
Kind Autumn was my she-wolf
And August – month of the Caesars – smiled on me.

Newly reaped ears
Lie in level rows;
Fingertips tremble, pressed against
Fingers fragile as themselves.

The hunters have trapped you:
Stag, the forests shall mourn!

You can have my black coat, sun,
But preserve my living power!

The old men of Euripides, an abject throng,
Shamble out like sheep.
I slither like a snake,
In my heart – dark injury.

But it will not be long
Before I shake off sadness,
Like a boy in the evening
Shaking sand from his sandals.

– How the splendour of these veils and of this dress
Weighs me down in my disgrace!

– In stony Troezen there shall be
A notorious disaster,
The royal stairs
Shall redden with shame
…
…
And a black sun rise
For the amorous mother.

– Oh if it were hatred seething in my breast, –
But, you see, the confession burst from my own lips.

– In broad daylight Phaedra burns
With a black flame.
In broad daylight
A funeral taper smoulders.
Hippolytus, beware of your mother:
Phaedra – the night – stalks you
In broad daylight.

– With my black love I have sullied the sun…
…
– We are afraid, we do not dare
To succour the imperial grief.
Stung by Theseus, night fell on him.
We shall bring the dead home with our burial chant;
We shall cool the black sun
Of its savage, insomniac passion.

We shall die in transparent Petropolis,
Where Proserpina rules over us.
We drink the deadly air with every breath,
And every hour is the anniversary of our death.
Goddess of the sea, dread Athena,
Remove your mighty helmet of stone.
We shall die in transparent Petropolis:
Here Proserpina is tsar, not you.

This night is irredeemable.
Where you are, it is still light.
At Jerusalem’s gates
A black sun has risen.

The yellow sun is more terrible –
Hush-a-bye, baby.
Jews in the bright temple
Buried my mother.

Bereft of priests, devoid of grace,
Jews in the bright temple
Sang the service
Over this woman’s ashes.

The voice of Israelites rang out
Over my mother.
I woke in a radiant cradle,
Lit by a black sun.

Disbelieving the miracle of resurrection,
We wandered through the cemetery.
– You know, the earth everywhere
Reminds me of those hills
…
…
Where Russia stops abruptly
Above the black and deafly roaring sea.

From these monastic slopes
An ample field runs down.
As it was I didn’t want to travel south
Away from spacious Vladimir,
But to stay there with that occluded nun
In the dark wooden village of god’s fools
Would have spelled disaster.

I kiss your sunburnt elbow
And a wax-like patch of forehead –
Still white, I know,
Under a strand of dark-complexioned gold.
I kiss your wrist whose turquoise bracelet
Leaves a band of white:
Here, in Tauris, ardent summers
Work their wonders.

How quickly you went dark
And came to the Redeemer’s meagre icon
And couldn’t be torn away from kissing –
You who in Moscow had been so proud.
For us only a name remains,
A miraculous sound for a long time to come.
Take from me these grains of sand:
I’m pouring them from hand to hand.

Out of the bottle the stream of golden honey poured so slowly
That she had time to murmur (she who had invited us):
Here, in sad Tauris, where fate has led us,
We shan’t be bored. – She glanced over her shoulder.

Everywhere the rites of Bacchus, as if the world were only
Watchmen, dogs; you’ll not meet anyone:
Like heavy barrels the peaceful days roll on;
Far-off voices in a hut – you neither understand them nor reply.

After tea we came into the great brown garden,
Dark blinds lowered like eyelids on the windows,
Past white columns to see the grapes
Where airy glass has sluiced the sleepy mountain.

The vine, I said, lives on like ancient battles –
Leafy-headed horsemen fight in flowery flourishes:
The science of Hellas in stony Tauris – and here are
The noble golden acres, the rusty furrows.

Well, in the white room silence stands like a spinning-wheel.
It smells of vinegar and paint and the cellar’s new wine.
Do you remember, in the Grecian house, the wife dear to all
(Not Helen – another) – how long she spent weaving?

Golden fleece, where are you, golden fleece?
The whole journey a thundering of the sea’s weighty waves.
And leaving his ship, canvas worn out on the seas,
Odysseus came back, filled with time and space.