Osip Mandelshtam - Selected Poems

Life’s reticulations loosen, madness looms.
So a ray of light spun by a spider
Scatters ribbed pillars,
The crystal temples of eternity.

A thin beam of light to join them,
The columns of grateful pure lines
Shall gather intimately some time or other,
Like guests with an open countenance.

Only let it be now on earth, and not in heaven,
As in a house full of music. –
If only we don’t scare or wound them –
It would be pleasant to survive.

Forgive me for what I’m telling you;
Quietly, quietly read it back to me.

This is what I want most of all:
With no one on my track
To soar behind the light
That I couldn’t be farther from;

And for you to shine in that sphere –
There is no other happiness –
And learn from a star
What light could mean.

A star can only be star,
Light can only be light,
Because whispering warms us
And babbling makes us strong.

And I would like to say to you,
My little one, mumbling:
It’s by means of our babbling
That I hand you to the light.

This azure island was exalted by its potters –
Green Crete. In the resounding earth
They baked their gift. Do you hear the dolphin fins
Beat underground?

It’s easy to remember the sea
In the clay enraptured by firing;
The cold power of a pot
Cleaves into sea and passion.

Azure island, volatile Crete,
Give me back what is mine – my labour;
From the breasts of the fruitful goddess
Fill the baked vessels.

This was, turned azure, and was sung,
Long before Ulysses,
Before food and drink
Were called ‘my’ and ‘mine’.

Recover and shine again,
Star of ox-eyed heaven,
And fortuity, the flying fish,
And the sea saying yes .

As if words were not enough,
The theta and iota of a Greek flute –
Unsculptural, unaccountable –
Matured, laboured, crossed frontiers.

It’s impossible to forsake the flute:
It can’t be stopped with clenched teeth,
It can’t be prodded into speech with the tongue,
It can’t be kneaded with the lips.

The flute player doesn’t know repose –
It seems to him that he’s alone,
That some time or other out of lilac clay
He formed his native sea.

With the urgency of recollecting lips,
With an ambitious, resonant murmur,
He collects the sounds to save them,
Neatly, stingily.

Later we shall not be able to repeat him,
Clods of clay in the sea’s hands,
And when I am filled with the sea
My measure has become disease.

My own lips now lisp,
Plague or murder at the root.
And involuntarily falling, falling,
I diminish the force of the flute.

I raise this greenness to my lips,
This sticky promise of leaves,
This breach-of-promise earth:
Mother of maples, of oaks, of snowdrops.

See how I am dazzled, blinded,
Obedient to the lowliest root.
Aren’t they too much splendour for one’s eyes –
The explosions of this park?

Like little balls of mercury, the frogs:
With their croaking they couple into a sphere;
Each twig becomes a branch,
And the air a chimera of milk.

With her delightful uneven way of walking,
Limping on the empty earth,
A halting freedom draws her on.
It seems that a clear conjecture lingers in her gait –
Something to do with this Spring weather,
Original mother of the sepulchral dome.
And this shall always be beginning.

There are women who are natives of the sodden earth:
Their every step a hollow sobbing,
Their calling to accompany the risen,
To be first to meet the dead.
And we should trespass to demand caresses of them,
And to part from them is beyond our strength.

But whatever shall be is a promise only.