TRISTIA (Osip Mandelstam)

7/31/2019 TRISTIA (Osip Mandelstam)

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Tristia

Osip Mandelstam

(Translation by Ilya Sham bat)


2/68

---------------------------------------------------------- Copyright Osip Mandelstam

Copyright English translation by Ilya Shambat

([email protected])

Date: 14 Aug 2001

Origin: "Kamen. Tristia"

SOURCE: lib.ru

----------------------------------------------------------


3/68

INDEX

1

Silentium

The Snake

Overpass

Casino

Village of the Tsar

Golden Coin

Old Man

St. Petersburg

The Lutheran

Hagia Sofia

Notre Dame

Menagerie

Straw (Salome)

Decembrist

Meganom

Tristia

The Tortoise

Venetian Life

Dusk of Liberty

The Swallow


4/68

1

It's so my own and so familiar. What shouldI do with this God-given flesh and blood?

For joys so quiet as to live and breathe,

Who will receive my gratitude for these?

I'm both the gardener and flower one,

In this world's dungeons I am not alone.

On the glass of the eternal one can see

The traces of my breath and of the warmth of me.

Henceforth it bears a pattern which is mine

Even to me unknown from recent times.

Let it be drained, the turmoil of the day -The lovely pattern won't be crossed away.


5/68

Silentium

She has not taken her first sigh -She is the word and music both -

And thus of all that lives and grows

A timeless and unbroken tie.

Placidly breathe the breasts of sea

The day is bright, as if gone mad,

The sea foam's pallid lilacs stand

In vase of lapis lazuli.

O, would my lips accept the lure

Of muteness prime, now so remote,

Reminding of a crystal notes

That are innately truly pure.

Be foam, O Venus, stay as mists,And words to music do return

And heart, at heart's own shame do burn,

Fused with the core of what exists!

x x x

An inexpressible sorrow

Two giant pupils opened wide,

A vase of flowers rose beside

And into air her crystals threw

The room was filled three meters deep


6/68

With dreaminess - hello sweet balm!

That such a liliputian realm

Could have consumed so much of sleep.

A bit of wine a bit of cake -

A bit of sunny May despite -

And thinnest fingers snowy white,

Alive at last, have stretched awake.

x x x

A snow hive cleaner than the air,

Crystal more see-through than the glass

A turquoise veil adorned with brass

Carelessly tossed upon a chair.

A cloth made drunk of her own glow

Caressed by tenderness of light

Experienced the summer bright

As though it were the winter snow.

And if through diamonds made of ice

Frosts of eternities were streaming

Here is the flutter of the dreamingFast-living blue-eyed dragonflies.

x x x


7/68

Blackened wind weaves patterns hollow

Under barely breathing leaves

And a trembling little swallow

In dark skies a circle weaves.

Quietly argue in the heart

Dear, dying, mine despite,

An impending dusk apart

Of an ebbing ray of light.

And above the woods of dusk

Has arisen copper moon;

Why so little song, I ask,

And such silence in the lone?

x x x

Why is the soul so lyrical

And so few are the names I love

And the ready rhythm but a miracle

Like Aquillon from above?

He will raise clouds of dust in a hurry

He will leaf through the paper stackAnd he will not come back -- or maybe

As another he will come back?

Winds of Orpheus are embracing -

You will leave for the sea and sky -

And, the world not created praising,

I forgot the superfluous "I".


8/68

In a make-believe grove I have wandered

And into an azure cave delved..

Am I really real, I ponder,And death will claim my true self?

x x x

Perhaps you not need me not this minute,

Night; from sea foams of the world -

A shell without a pearl within it -

Upon your shores I have been hurled.

With mists the ocean you embellish

And wordlessly you sing as well;

But you will love, and you will cherishThe pretense of a useless shell.

On ocean sands you lie next to her

In misty haze you dress her well

And with tight roping you tie to her

An oversized and brazen bell.

And then the seashell, fragile, empty,A lonely heart that beats in vain,

You fill with sea foam's whispers plenty,

With fog with wind and with light rain.

x x x


9/68

Oh your image, haunting me yet blurred,

In the fog I could not touch or feel.

"Goodness me" by error slipped the wordUnawares, yet heeding its appeal.

Name of god, like a large bird, so intensely,

Took a flight right out of my chest.

Straight ahead the fog is steaming densely

And behind me, cage's emptiness.

x x x

White light falls in cold measure

In damp forest on summer day

In my heart I am slowly carryingSadness, like bird colored gray.

What to do with a bird that is wounded?

She went silent, then died as well.

From a fogged-over belltower

Someone has stolen the bell.

And here stands the silentMuted and orphaned height

Like a tower white and empty

In foggy and quiet night.

Morning abysmally tender

Semi-awake, semi-dream,

Foggy ringing of thoughts,


10/68

Oblivion like a scream.


11/68

The Snake

The dusk of autumn -- just like rusted metalSings, violates and eats through flesh

That falls like all temptation and Cresus's capital

Before the razor blade of your anguish.

My God! Like by a dancing snake I'm falling

Exhausted, and before her I am meek;

My soul's salvation I am not extolling

The reason or the muse I do not seek.

Enough untying with my wits or essence

A finely woven yarn of smart replies

There are no words for laments and confessions,

Heavy and shallow is my cup of lies.

Why do you breathe? On stones you will be dancing,Sick python you, then curling in a ball;

Next moment swing and twist as if romancing,

And instantly in expiration fall.

And uselessly the day of execution,

Agape at all the sound and all the sight,

I listen as has fearlessly come completion,

The screech of metal and the wind's dark might!

x x x

Today is an ominous day:


12/68

Grasshoppers singing is down

And shadow of rocks far away

Is darker than coroner's gown.

There's jingle of shimmering arrows

And screams of crows grown wise,

I dream of terrible sorrows

Moment past moment flies.

Move skeins of events apart

Break through the earth's cage

Rebelling anthem impart

The copper of secret rage!

The pendulum on the clock

Of souls is strict, swings with hate,

And ominous is the knock

Of fate on the secret gate.


13/68

Overpass

I feel a fear that I cannot defyIn presence of the secretive above.

Like swallow I am happy in the sky

And loftiness of towers I love.

It seems as though the ancient overpass

Over abyss on bending beams that groan

I hear. A snowball grows and gathers mass,

Eternity beats on the hours of stone.

When would it be! But it is not my role

To dance on faded leaves and scream and hiss

And sadness sings in me without control -

I feel an avalanche in heaven's bliss!

And in the bell tower you can find my soul

But music will not save from the Abyss!

x x x

No, not the moon, a luminous clock face

Shines from the sky, and what is my disgrace,

That I can feel the weak star's pallid force?

And loathsome to me is Batyushkov's rhyme:

They asked him here once what was the time

Eternity, he told them in response.


14/68

x x x

I cannot stand the raysOf banal stars at night

Greetings, my madness old,

Gun tower's searing height.

Become a whirling stone

A cobweb become instead:

The empty heaven's chest

Wound with a thinning thread.

My time will come as well

Spreading the wings as I ought

But whereverfrom comes

Arrow of living thought?

Exhausting my way or my timeI'll be back again here;

There I could not love,

Here to love I fear.


15/68

Casino

I take no joy in the pleasures of the strifeAnd nature is a graying dot today

And only in light drunkenness I may

Experience the colors of my life.

The wind is playing with a cloud immersed

An anchor falls to bottom of the sea

And breathless like a canvas under me

Soul overhangs abysses of the cursed.

But I adore casino on the sea

The foggy window swinging avidly

On rippling cloth a ray of sun shines through

Surrounded by water green and blue

When like a rose a glass of wine is full

I see the flapping wings of a seagull!


16/68

Village of the Tsar

Let's head to village of the TsarWhere drunken, swept by wind and free

Young men are smiling right at me

Riding on horseback high and far.

Let's head to village of the Tsar!

Parks, castles, stables in a row

And on the trees are lumps of snow

And to the shouts -- "be well, hotshots"

The words "be well" ring back like shots -

Parks, castles, stables in a row.

One-story houses wide and far

Where generals of single mind

Shorten their lifetimes going blind

Reading Dumas and "Nieva":Mansions -- not houses -- wide and far.

Train whistles. Riding in, a knight,

With retinue in pavilions full of light

A sword behind him sternly dragging

Officer leaves the cabin, ragging:

I do not doubt this is a knight!

And man is coming home again --

Where etiquette and decor reign

A fear-instilling chariot

A grey-haired fraulein on the spot

Knows, man is coming home again...


17/68

Golden Coin

All day long the autumn's dampened airIn confoundment and angst I have inhaled.

I would like a supper - and the stars are

In a blackened purse and gold and pale!

And as with a yellow fog o'ergrown,

I descend into a tiny hole;

Nowhere such a restaurant have I known

Nor such company can I recall.

Petty bureaucrats, Japanese dealers,

Theologians of a foreign trust..

On the porch a man is feeling dollars

And they all are drunken to the last.

Be so kind to me, and change my money.I am asking him persistently --

Only do not give me paper money,

I can't stand the crumpled bills of three.

What to do with all this drunken crowd?

How have I lucked in here, I enjoin?

If I have the right, I ask out loud,

Won't you change for me my golden coin?


18/68

Old Man

It's dawn, sirens are wailing,Seven a.m.

You that appear like Verlen,

Wake up old man!

Eyes childish, angling,

Green fire makes ash;

Upon the neck is hanging

A colored sash.

He curses, mutters, mumbles

Words lost within;

He wants to make confession

But first to sin.

A disappointed workerA bitter one

The eye, beat up in melee,

Shines like the sun.

Thus having followed Sabbath,

He drags his feet:

Happy privation stares

From every street.

At home, flying with curse words

And white with rage,

A harsh wife meets and screams at

The drunken sage.


19/68

St. Petersburg

Above the federal buildings' yellow gownA hazy flurry circles far and wide

Within the sled the coachman sits down

And with broad gesture hides his coat inside.

Ships fall asleep. And in the evening, rocking,

Thick cabin windows fill to brim with light.

And monstrously -- just like a fortress docking --

Russia is breathing heavily at night.

On the Nieva stand hundred embassies;

Admiralty, the sun, and silence glare.

The state's tight porphyry upon us sits,

Poor like an uncouth bodice made of hair.

Hard is the journey of the Northern snob -Eugene Onegin's well-cliche'ed despair;

On Senate square are mounds of fallen snow

A bonfire's smoke, and chill of steel made bare.

The ducks are sipping water, and the gulls

In waving folds of sea are gently lurking

Where, selling lumps of beef or tender rolls,

Like opera singers peasant men are walking.

Into the fog a row of birds is flying:

Self-loving, modest march can't wait.

That goof Onegin, poverty decrying

Is breathing gasoline and cursing fate.


20/68

x x x

Foreigner sits in a stifling tavernIn the hour when all seems dead,

Leaving behind the dullard drunkards

I walk out and clear my head.

Courage of the midnight women

And the crazy stars' cold might,

And a bum is begging money

For a room to spend the night.

Who, please tell me, in this moment

With the grape will dull my wits,

If the dock is work of Peter

Copper horseman, granite streets.

I hear signals from the fortressI feel warmth drift from the sea.

Shots of cannon through the cellars

Have been ringing probably.

And much deeper than the ringing

Of that inflamed head on me

Are the stars, stark conversation,

And a Nieva westerly.


21/68

The Lutheran

On Sunday walk near Protestant cathedralI came across a funeral in motion

The absent-minded passerby I noticed

Put all of them in a severe commotion.

The foreign language did not reach my ear

And only a thin whiplash shone clear

And the empty holiday thoroughfare

Reflected lazy horseshoes from the rear.

And in elastic darkness of the chariot

Where sadness, hypocrite, hid her face,

Wordless and tearless, lost for hellos,

In vase the autumn roses interlaced.

Foreigners followed in a black processionAnd tear-drenched dames were walking in their stead

Blushed cheeks covered with veils, and with direction

The horseman ruled above them: Straight ahead!

Whoever you have been, deceased Lutheran,

Lightly they buried you and lightly sang.

The eyes were fogged over with decent tears

And with reserve above you church bells rang.

And then I thought: I need not proselytyze.

We are not prophets, not preachers if I may,

We don't like heaven, hell we do not fear,

We shine like candles in the middle of the day.


22/68

Hagia Sofia

1.Hagia Sofia -- here to stop and stare

The Lord has ordered people and the tsars!

Your dome, as an eyewitness once described it,

As if by chains is hanging from the stars.

2.

To all a shining light -- age of Justinian,

When to steal off for foreign gods unseen

Dedicated Diana the Ephesian

Hundred and seven marble columns green.

3.

To what aspired your generous creator,

When high in spirit and in reason blessed,

He laid your features on the ground

And pointed them directions east and west?

4.The temple shines, in the world's aura bathing,

And forty windows -- triumph of the light;

On sails under the dome the four archangels

Finest of all and basking in delight.

5.

This building will outlast people and ages

So wise and spherical and nobly built

And incandescent weeping of the angelsWill not corrode away the darkened gilt.


23/68

Notre Dame

1.Where Roman magistrate once judged the foreign nation

Basilica stands. With muscles bursts

A light and cross-shaped bridge: Christ joyful, like the

first

Adam, having spread his nerves out in elation.

2.

But will reveal itself the hidden plan!

Here might of granite arches took good care

That ram-like daring overpass stood there

Yet loaded massive walls were good to stand.

3.

A desert labyrinth, a forest timeless,

A rational abyss across the gothic soul,

Oak and kingdom to adorn the hall

Egyptian might and Christian shyness.4.

But what is more important, Notre Dame,

Your monstrous ribs I studied from the start

And oft I thought: I too will make fine art

From sturdy heaviness through which I came.

x x x

"How luxury of these wares and robes and lace

Is loathsome to me in my disgrace"

"In the stone Troezene

A famous sorrow will be


24/68

Stairs in the king's name

Will grow red from shame

Black sun will rise above

A mother in love""Oh if the hatred only in my chest had boiled

But recognition from my lips recoiled"

"Phaedra burns with a black flame in broad daylight

A funeral torch burns in broad daylight

Fear your mother, Hippolitus,

Phaedra the night guards you in broad daylight"

"With black love I blotched the sun's face

Death will cool my ash from a clean vase."

"We fear, we do not dare

Help relieve the king's despair.

Hearbroken with Theseus,

Night attacked him too

We, with a funeral song

Send the dead along

Passion sleepless and wildWill have the black sun reviled."


25/68

Menagerie

1

A word of peace, rejected, stands

At start of an insulted era;

There's light inside a darkened cavern

And ether of the foreign lands;

Ether, of which we just could not,

Of which to breathe we did not want;

With voice of goats, deep and gaunt,

Priests are singing, hairy lot.

2

While goatlings and steer both

On foggy pastures were delaying

And friendly eagles were relaying

From shoulders of the sleepy rocks

Germans fed eagles on the rockAn Englishman a lion revered

And Gallic comb at once appeared

From out the mantle of a cock.

3

And now behold, the wild sage

Has grasped the steeple of Heracles,

And then the soil was shorn of sparkles,

Black and ungrateful like old age.I'll take a dry stick in my palms

And wring from it a spark of fire,

Let into stream of night expire

The beasts aroused by my charms.

4

The cock, the lion, the brown, thin

Eagle and the tender bear --


26/68

We'll build a cage before the war

And warm with fire the animal skin.

And wine of time I also sing

The source of the Italian fableAs in the pre-aryan cradle

Tongues Slavic and Germanic ring.

5

You aren't too lazy, Italy,

To shake the chariots of Rome,

With gargling of domestic fowl

Having flown from menagerie?

And you, the hen, do not play rough:

The eagle here sits mean and hyped

What that for you and all your type

A heavy stone is not enough?

6

In the menagerie the beasts now reign,

We will get calmer for much longer,

And in its fullness will gush Volga,As lighter water flows through Rhine.

And a wise man from days of yore

To foreigner will pay his honor

Like demi-god, in whirling fervor,

Dancing with river on her shore!

x x x

In multitude of choir polyhymnal

All tender churches sing in their own voice

And the stone vaults of the Dormition cathedral


27/68

Like eyebrows in still higher arch rejoice.

And from the rampart fortified by the archangels

I watched the city from a wondrous heightIn the Acropolis sadness has deranged me

For Russian name and Russian beauty's sight.

That of the garden we dream it is no wonder,

Where doves do soar upon the hot blue beams

The nun sings Orthodox hymns, Dormition's wonder,

Florence in Moscow so tender seems

And the five-domed Moscow cathedrals

With soul Italian and Russian both

Remind me of Aurora's reappearance

With Russian surname and draped in fur clothes.

x x x

Upon a horse-sleigh laid to brim with straw

And covered barely with hides and birch,

We rode around the lumbering Moscow

From Sparrow Hills to a familiar church.

On Uglich street the kids are playing babki

And from a stove exudes bread's sweet smell

Through street without a hat they take me

Three candles burn in tower near a bell.

Not just three candles burned, but three encounters,


28/68

One of them God had blessed and known

Forth did not happen -- and the Rome still further -

And never did he love the ancient Rome.

The sled was diving into blackened snowdunes

And from the darkness people poured like weeds.

Thin peasant men and hateful-looking women

Right at the gate were separating seeds.

The distance, wet, had blackened with birds' trails,

And hands tied down inside the sleigh grew tired.

They drive the prince -- the body numbs and pales -

And then they set the orange straw on fire.


29/68

Straw (Salome) *

I

When, little Straw, you lie in giant bedroom

And, sleepless, wait, that solemn, true and high,

Heavy and calm -- what could be more despairing --

Forever on you will descend the sky -

A whistling Straw, a dry Straw, or Straw empty,

You drank death to the brim and made it raw.

A straw broke dear, lifeless and so tender:

No, not Salome, no, it was but the Straw.

In sleepless hour all objects grow in scale

As if in numbers few -- it is so quiet --

In mirror pillows flash, a little pale,

And in round haze the bed reflects at night.

No, not the Straw in her triumphant satin,

In giant room over Nieva's black streams,

Twelve months are singing of the hour of Satan,

And pale blue ice through scalding air steams.

The breath of triumphing December rises

As if heavy Nieva were in the room.No, not the Straw, not that which the man despises:

I've learned you, blessed words, Ligeia, doom.

II

I've learned you, blessed words, that man despises,

Ligeia, Seraphita, Straw, Lenore,

In giant bedroom heavy Nieva rises


30/68

And blue blood gushes from the granite floor.

Over Nieva December shines white light.

Twelve months are singing of the hour of Satan.No, not the Straw in her triumphant satin

Instills a slow and tortuous respite.

There lives in me December's own Ligeia

Whose love sleeps in sarcophagus and burns,

And you, my little Straw, perhaps Salome,

Were killed by pity and will not return.

* In Russian Solominka, or Little Straw, nickname for

Lou-Andreas Solome.

x x x

"I lost a cameo I used for grooming

On shores of the Nieva, I know not where.

I pity a majestic Roman woman" -

You uttered this to me in near despair.

But what's the point, you gorgeous Georgian maiden,

Of shaking divine ashes from the sky?One fluffy snowflake, its beauty fading,

Melted upon the lashes of your eye.

And then you bowed the neck so short and tender.

There are no Romans and no cameo.

I pity the dark-bodied Tinotina --

A Rome for maidens on the Nieva's shore.


31/68

x x x

Hellenes were readying for war

Over a gorgeous island Salamin.

Overtaken fully by the foe

From Athens' harbor it was seen.

And now the friends and islanders

Fill our ships with their toil.

Englishmen did not love earlier

The sweetness of Europe's soil.

O Europe, you, the new Hellene,

Guard Pirius and Acropolis.

We don't need presents from the island,A whole forest of unwelcome ships.

x x x

II'm feeling chilly. The transparent spring

Dresses Petropolis in a verdant down

But, like a jellyfish, Nieva's blue waves

Revulse me slightly and bid me calm down.

Upon the northern shores of this great river

The headlights of the autos head out far

Dragonflies soar and steely-winged bugs shiver,


32/68

Above us sparkle golden heads of stars.

But not one star will murder probably

The heavy emerald waters of the sea.

IIIn the Petropolis of shades we will expire

Proserpina reigns above us in her power

With every breath partaking dying air,

Closer to death with every passing hour.

The goddess of the sea, mighty Athena,

Do please take off the giant stone attire.

In the Petropolis of shades we will expire.

In this place reigns not you, but Proserpina.

x x x

1In Sunday marvel disbelieving

We walked through cemetery stones

The land as you well know

Reminds me of these hills at dawn

Where Russia tears itself free

Over a black and deafening sea.

2

From monastery mountMeadow runs long and still.

I don't want to head south

From wilds of Vladimir.

But in this darkened, wooden

And ugly country rubble

To stay with a drunk nun

Means only trouble.


33/68

3

I kiss the suntanned elbow

And waxen forehead skin.

I know -- under tanned yellow -It still is white and thin.

I kiss the place where bracelet

Has left a stripe of pale.

Taurida's flaming summer

Creates such miracle.

4

How soon did you grow tanner

And came to mass to bow

You kissed the cross forever

Grew proud in Moscow

To us remains but naming:

Until the end

Take from my palms forever

The holy sand.

x x x

This night has gone beyond redemption

And it is daylight where you dream.

Today the black sun has arisenOver Jerusalem.

Sun that is yellow is still scarier.

Goodnight, sleep tight,

Jews interred my mother's remnants

In the temple of the light


34/68

And without a divine blessing

And without a priest's sash

Judeans in a light temple

To the heaven sang her ash.

And then over my mother

Voices of Israelites rung

I awoke inside my cradle,

Shining with a blacker sun.


35/68

Decembrist

"To this the Senate serves as witness -Such actions do not die"

Smoked a cigar and tucked his gown,

Chess players nearby.

The dreams of honor he exchanged for plot

In god-forsaken deep Siberian wilds

And elegant cigar at poisoned lips,

The truth of bitter world having revealed.

First German oaks rustle with their leaves

Then in the shadows Europe weeps and begs

At each triumphant angle of the curve

Quadrigae's stallions stand upon hind legs.

Once in our glass blue punch glowedAnd with the sound much like a samovar

A girlfriend spoke quietly from afar,

The freedom-loving Rheinian guitar.

The voices of the living scream and cry

About the citizen's sweet liberty

But victims do not wish the open sky

But rather work and constancy.

All is confused, and nobody can hear

That it is getting colder every day

All is confused, and it is sweet to hear:

Russia, Lethe, and Lorelei.


36/68

Meganom

1Still far away are asphodels,

Transparent-graying spring

But in the meanwhile, here,

Sand rustles, and wave rings.

But now my soul has entered

Persephone's light charms

In kingdom of the dead there are

No tanned and gorgeous arms.

2

Why do we trust the boat

With coffin urn's dead weight

And over amethyst waters

Black roses celebrate

My soul strives through the ether

Beyond Cape MeganomBlack sail returns from there

Carrying funeral gloom.

3

How fast the clouds are running

Unlighted and so soon

And black rose leaves are flying

Under this windy moon

And bird of death and weepingDrags through a mourning stern

Huge flag of reminiscence

Behind a cypress stern.

4

The fan of summers opens

With sadness in my hand,

In darkness and with weeping


37/68

Amulet lost in sand,

My soul aims for that country

Beyond Cape Meganom

And black sail is returningCarrying funeral gloom.

x x x

When on the squares in silence

We slowly lose our minds

Cruel winter offers to us

The cold and clean rhine wine

It gives in silver bucket

The Valhalla's white wine

And of a northern manWith glimmer it reminds.

But northern skalds are rougher

They know no joy of game

And northern wilds are fonder

Of amber, feast and flame.

They dream of Southern airAnd magic foreign sky

And still the stubborn girlfriend

Won't even give a try.

x x x


38/68

Among the priests a young Levite

As morning sentinel for long remained

Judean night grew denser over him,A ruined temple stood in bitter pain.

He spoke: The yellow of the sky is menace

Run, Jews, over Euphrates it is night.

And old men thought: We should not take the blame

here.

This joy of Judea, this black and yellow light.

He was with us, as on the riveshore

We draped the Saturday in precious linen

And with a heavy menorah he lit

Jerusalem's night and vapour of nonbeing.

x x x

1

A river of golden honey from the bottle was pouring

So long and so thick that the hostess had time to speak:

"To this sad Taurides, where life does not get boring,

We jouneyed through fortune" -- and looked over theneck.

2

There are Bacchus's services everywhere, as if in the

whole world

There were dogs and janitors only. Walk -- and no one

will notice.


39/68

And like heavy barrels, the days, calm and temperate,

rolled.

From far in the mountains a voice: "You won't answer, or

know this."3

We entered a giant brown garden when done with the tea,

With curtains like eyelids the windows were sealed over

We walked past white columns to look at the grapes

swinging free,

With air like with glass strands the enchanted mountains

did shower.

4

I said that the grape plant, like an ancient battlefield,

lives

Where curly-haired horsemen battle in frizzly order,

The stony Taurides remembers the science of Greece

These rusty rows, ten of each, noble and with gold sealed

over.

5And in a white room, silence stands like a hiding wall,

Smells are of vinegar, paint, and fresh wine from down

under.

Remember, that in a Greek house the wife was beloved

by all,

Not Helen but -- for as long as she wove - another.

6

Golden fleece, please tell me, where are you, goldenfleece --

All the way rose and roared on the journey the heavy sea

waves

And leaving the ship, having labored the canvas at seas,

Odysseus was coming back home, full of time, full of

space.


40/68

x x x

The wooden organ did not roar this evening.

The cradle song of Schubert to us sang

The windmill blew and in the hurricane's singing

Laughing blue-eyed intoxication rang.

The world of ancient song is green and brown,

The world of ancient song, young for all age,

Where nightingale elms' towering crowns

The forest rocks with fierce and beastly rage.

And night's return, so terrible and mighty,

That song is wild and deep just like black wine -

This poltergeist is but a visage empty

That, thoughtless, knocks upon the windowpane.

x x x

Your fabulous enunciation -

Hot whistling of a bird of prey,Create a true representation

Of silken eyelids, I dare say.

"What" -- and the head has fallen

"Why" -- I am asking you

And far away the leaves are calling:

We live upon this planet too.


41/68

So let them say that love is flighty -

Flightier hundred times is death.

The soul is striving still and mighty,Our lips fly toward it with each breath.

And in your whisper, so much silk,

And so much air, and so much light,

That as if blinded we both drink

The sunless brew of windy night.


42/68

Tristia

The essence of farewell I have extractedFrom hatless laments of the sleepless night

As oxen chew, and waiting grows protracted,

And end of city vigil is in sight -

And I recall the rooster night with fear

When lost in doleful journey for too long

Into the void the tear-drenched eyes did peer

And woman's cry mingled with muse's song.

Who yet again can say farewell, unknowing

What longing and what sorrow waits for us,

What good is it to judge the rooster's crowing

When fire is burning in Acropolis;

And on the somewhere dawn of some new lifetime,

While in the shed the oxen calmly stall,

Why does the rooster, herald of new lifetime,Flap his flamboyant wings on city wall?

And yet I love the way fate weaves her gown:

The shuttle runs, the spindle turns apace,

And straight ahead, look now, for like swan's down

The barefoot Delia is flying in your face!

Oh, of a life is but a shoddy structure

When tongue is starved so utterly for light!All was before, all will repeat then rupture

And only recognition brings respite.

Thus it will be: A figurine, transparent,

Stands on an earthen dish that's clean and wide,

And like a snow-white winter squirrel pelt

A girl leans over wax and looks inside.


43/68

Ours not is to divine the Greek Erebus:

Wax is to her what bronze is to her mate.

Our dice falls only in the field of battle;

With divination women seal their fate.


44/68

The Tortoise

1Upon Pieria's great stone cascades

The muses were conducting their first choir

And just like bees, the blind musicians made

Gifts of Ionian honey from their lyres.

From a young woman's convex forehead

Cold air blew in gusts like rays of sun

That the archipelago's tender coffins

Would open for the far-off great-grand-son.

2

The springtime stomps across the meadows of Hellas,

The rainbow-booted Sappho runs along

Cicadas ring as if with tiny hammers

And interweave like tendrils with sweet song.

The carpenter has built a giant tower,

For wedding day they suffocated hensAnd to create the shoes the clumsy cobbler

Has stretched and tattered all the five ox skins.

3

Unhurried and unkempt is turtoise-lyre

Like something legless barely crawling past

She lies under the sunshine of Epirus,

Her golden stomach warming not-too-fast.

Well, who in such a shape will care for her,Who'll turn her over while she sleeps at night?

In dreams she is awaiting for Terpander

Sensing at dawn the drying fingers' flight.

4

Cold dew is feeding oaks with gentle ease

The unkempt grass with erudition speaks her view,

Honeycomb falls to the delight of bees -


45/68

Oh, holy isles, exactly where are you,

Where broken bread is never eaten,

Where there is only honey, wine and milk,

Where fiddle's labor does not reach the heaven,And languorously turns the fortune's wheel.

x x x

1

Let's head to other places, other science,

Where dinner is kebab and cornish hen,

And where a placard advertising trousers

Gives knowledge of the tastes of local men.

A man's tuxedo -- headless striving, fearless,

The local barber's screaming violin

And mesmerizing iron -- gives appearanceOf heaven's washers and gravity's grin.

2

Here women grow old in stockings, yet

Think of foreign apparel, it so seems,

And admirals in angular berets

Look like the Queen Scheherezada's dreams.

There is some grape, sun gleams from far away

And a fresh wind relentlessly blows sternly.Swimming is hard, but stars remain the same

In the vicinity of Baghdad and of Smyrna.

x x x


46/68

1

In crystal swampland there is such a violence!

Beyond, Sienian mountains stand sky-clad,Gothic cathedrals of the rocks gone mad

Hang in the air, where there is fur and silence.

2

From hanging staircases of kings and prophets

Organ descends, filled with the holy ghost,

Barking of German shepherds, fierce repose,

The shepherds' mutton and the judges' outfits.

3

Here earth is motionless, and in her castle

I drink the Christendom's dear cold air

I trust in wine and in the psalmist's prayer,

In keys and cloth of churches of Apostle.

4

Which line could have passed on the Crystal vase

Fastened within an ether of high notes:And like a song of Palestine the goodwill floats

From Christian Mountain through the transfixed space.

x x x

Nature is Rome, and is reflected there.

We see images of citizen's parades

Like in blue circus, in transparent air,

On forum of the fields and forest's collonades.

Nature is that same Rome, and once more

We do not need to worry Gods in guilt,


47/68

From animal entrails to divine of war,

To pray that slaves be quiet and stones be built.

x x x

Only children's books to read,

Only children's thoughts to debate,

To spread far all that is great,

From deep sadness to rise and heed.

I am deadly tired of life,

I won't take from her any more,

But I love this earth so poor,

For another has not arrived.

In a far-away garden green-blueOn a simple swing I swung free

And high and dark fur tree

I remember in foggy spew.

x x x

Return into the lap of incest

From where you have descended, Leah,

That yellow twilight you preferred

To golden sun of Ilion.

Go forward, not a hand will touch you,


48/68

To father's chest, when night is dead,

And let the night the incest-maker

Let drop your head.

But fateful change that lasts forever

Will take place in you all the same.

You will be Leah and not Helen -

Not, not because this is your name -

And not because it is much harder

Within the veins to pour king's blood -

No, you will love a Judean

Vanish in him -- and help you God.

x x x

Behold, this air, made drunk with haze

Upon Kremlin's black square -

Maniacs shake the world in craze,

And poplars smell of fear.

From wax cathedrals' shapes are wrung,

A thick belltower forest,

Just like a robber without tongueIn stone rafters lost.

And in imprinted cathedrals,

Where it is cold and dark

Like tender muddy amphoras

Russian wine plays with sparks.


49/68

Marvelously round Uspenskiy,

Glorious in heaven's arches

And then the green Blagoveshenskiy,

It seems, suddenly lurches.

Archangelsky and Resurrection -

Like palms they flare

And fire hides in pitchers -

There's burning everywhere.

x x x

1

In St. Petersburg again we come together,

As though Sun inside there we interred

As though for the first time and foreverWe pronounced the blessed, thoughtless word.

In black velvet of a Soviet even,

In black velvet global emptiness,

Sing the darling eyes of blissful women,

Deathless flowers blossom and caress.

2

Like a wildcat the city her back arches

Over the bridge the patrol stands in lineAn angry motor through the darkness marches

And like a cookoo-bird begins to whine.

I need no nightly pass across the bridge

I do not fear the nightly watchmen;

And this one time for blessed, thoughtless speech

I will make prayer on a Soviet even.

3


50/68

The light theaterical whispering sounds

A women's sighing and their gentle charm

And deathless roses in a giant mound

Lying upon white Kypris's gentle arm.From boredom we are warming at a campfire,

Centuries will pass without harm,

And light ashes gather and inspire

The blessed, blissful women's darling arms.

4

Red garden rows of gallery somewhere,

In sumptious chiffon draped, boxes stand tall,

The windup doll of army officer -

Not for vile hypocrites and for black souls.

Well then, put out our candles with your finger,

Black velvet of world emptiness, sail free,

The blissful women's shoulders are singing

And the nocturnal sun you will not see.

x x x

On a pearl shuttle you spin

A thread of silk so fragile

Come forth, you fingers agile,

Lesson in charms begin.

Movements of arms about

Their ebbs and flows in flight -

To cause some solar fright

You cast a charm, no doubt

When your broad hand's on fire


51/68

Like shell grows still and fades,

Or quenches, runs toward shades,

Or morphs into pink fire.

x x x

We have gone mad from endless jubilation

Wine in the morning, hangover at night.

Your blush, oh drunken plague without respite,

How to contain the needless celebration?

Hand-shaking ceremonial and tortuous

And kisses on the street all through the night

When river's waves grow heavy with delight

And in the night the headlights burn like torches.

Like for a fairy wolf we wait for death

And he will be the first to die, I fear,

That has a startling mouth that's red with fear

And hair that falls upon the eyes like sheathe.

x x x

Fever rustles and lisps

Grasshopper hours are churning,

And dry stove crackles - This

Means that red silk is burning.


52/68

Why do mice whet with their molars

Thinning bottom of life spent -

There a swallow for her daughter

Has my shuttle's thread unbent.

On the roof the rain speaks clear --

There black silk is burning us alive

This the cherry tree will hear

And from bottom of the sea forgive.

Because it's helpless here

As the innocent are killed

Heart is in nightingale fever

And remains warm still.

x x x

My dry and dreary life

Fire has burned down

Not a stone but tree

I am singing now.

It is light and rough;

From a single pieceCome the fisher's oars

And the oak pith.

Nail the pilings tighter,

Knock, hammers, with all might,

About the wooden heaven

Where everything is light.


53/68

x x x

Of hunchbacked Tiflis I am dreamingSazandar coils and moans

On bridge with people teeming

Capital carpet-gleaming

As Kura runs below.

Restaurant from Caucasus

Where pilaf and wine abound,

A blushing waitress in her youth

Is now ready to serve you

Having served the table round.

Thick Cahetian red wine

It is sweet downstairs to drink

There it's cold, there divine

Drink in pleasure, drink two times:You don't need alone to drink.

In the tiniests of flasks

You will find a man in bliss

Teliani if you will ask

You will float on a flask,

And in fog will float Tiflis.

x x x

For 20 years an American woman

Must go to far-away Egypt


54/68

Forswearing the Titanic's guidance

She sleeps on bottom darker than the crypt

In America the trumpets sing out loudAnd monoliths arise of red steel towers

And then give away to chilly clouds

Their lips that with black tar are dusted over.

In the Louvre the ocean's daughter stands - alas -

Beautiful like poplar in her bliss

To grind sugary marble into dust

Like a squirrel she climbs Acropolis.

Understanding not a single sentence

She is reading Faustus on the train

All the while bemoaning that King Louis

On the throne of France does not remain.

x x x

Sweetness and tenderness -- like sisters alike are your

marks -

The wasp and the bee suckle honey then flutter as one -

Life ends, beach sand chills overnight, and the heavengets dark,

And carried away on black litter is yesterday's sun.

Ah, tender rosebush, delicate emanation!

To know what you are is far harder than mountain to

climb!

I have but one problem remaining in this incarnation:


55/68

To raise from the shoulders of man filthy burden of time!

I drink turbid air just like water with mildew diluted:

A visage appears in the sun, heart of darkness and clots:Two roses that once were of earth but by man were

polluted

Sweetness and tenderness, bound up in double knots!

x x x

1

Equally with all others

I want to serve you,

Drying from jealousy

My lips turned blue.

Word does not slakeA mouth dry from despair

Without you I am breathless

In empty air.

2.

I am no longer jealous

But yet I want you, dear,

I carry me like sacrifice

To executioner,And no I will not call you

Not love not glee;

The wild and foreign blood

Runs now through me.

3

Wait for one moment

And this I will tell you:


56/68

Not joy, but torment

I find in you.

And, like a sacrilege,

Bitten in frenzyYour tender cherry mouth

Still calls to me.

4

Return to me at last, love,

It's awful without you

Never more strongly

Have I felt you.

And in the midnight drama,

Asleep, awake,

I call your name out loud

Even as I shake.

x x x

1

A ghostlike scene is glimmering

Weak choirs of shades remain

With silk has draped Melpomene

Her temple's windowpanes

Frost crunches in the yardBlack chariots stand in row

People and objects are disheveled

Street crackles with hot snow.

2

Bit by bit the servants pick apart

The abandoned heap of bear furs

A butterfly flies over and departs,


57/68

And rose plants are draped in furs.

Gnats and boxes fashionably shimmer

From the theater light sweat moves in streams

On the street the flat lamps glimmerAnd like clouds arises heavy steam.

3

Coachmen have grown tired of their voices

And the night is black as if with coal.

Do not worry, darling Eurydice,

That our winter is unearthly cold.

Sweeter than the song of the Italians

Is the sound of Russian tongue to me,

For the sounds of harps from foreign countries

Clamor in it with great mystery.

4

Smell of smoke rises from lean mutton

With the mounds of snow the street is ringed

From a blissful songlike semitone

Flying at us is immortal spring,That this aria will sound forever:

"To green meadows you will return"

And to our feet falls a living sparrow

On the snow that is so hot, it burns.


58/68

Venetian Life

1To me the meaning of Venetian life is clear

Bleary though it be and fruitless;

Here she stares with smile instilling fear

Through the dirty bluish window glass.

2

Thinning air, blue veins through skin of arm,

A green brocade and the whitening snow

From the coat they take a corpse, sleepy and warm,

And on cypress stretcher lay it low.

3

And inside the basket candles burn

As if pigeon flew into the shrine,

And a man is dying in his turn

In the theater and on night divine.

4May no rescue come from foe or lover,

More than platinum the rings of Saturn weighs.

Block is set under black velvet cover,

Face is beautiful and looks away.

5

Heavy, Venice, is your dress and belt,

There are mirrors in the cypress frames

Air is faceted. In bedroom mountains meltOf that dirty bluish glass. Nothing remains.

6

Fingers hold an hourglass or roses.

Green of Adriatic sea, forgive,

Why are you so quiet, Venetian hostess,

From this holiday death row how do I leave?

7


59/68

The black Hesper flashes in the mirror,

All will pass. The truth is dark and dour.

Man is born. The pearl dies, barely clearer.

Susanna the elders must conjure.

x x x

It is a pity that the winter falls

Mosquitoes fly no more

But you, my dear, allowed me to recall

Light-headed straw.

Dragonflies weave paths across the blue

And like a swallow, circles mode -

Is that there a basket over you

Or pompous ode?

I wish not to advise, comment, dissever -

Excuses mean as little as they feel.

The taste of whipped cream is forever

And smell of orange peel.

You push at me at random from behind

As a result of this nothing gets worseWhat can I do: the most tender mind

Is fit entirely on the surface!

And then you try as with an angry spoon

The yolk of egg continually to stir.

It will get white, and now it will succumb

And still, a little more..


60/68

Everything teases, all things sing in you

As though it were roulade from Italy.

And then again your little cherry mouthBegs for a drying grape from me.

So do not try to be smart as that

To you all is a whim, all is a minute,

There is a shadow here of your hat,

And a Venetian bautta is within it.

x x x

Here is the discus, like a golden sun -

A blessed moment - in the air it stands -

The world is held in time like apple in one's hands -Here will be heard only the Grecian tongue.

A solemn zenith of the service to God's will,

Light of round cupolas glows in July,

That with full chest, outside of time we sigh

Of endless meadows where all time stands still.

Like noon eternal is the Eucharist -All drink the cups, all play and sing aloud,

Before the eyes of all the cup of God

Pours with a gaiety that can't desist.

x x x


61/68

When Psyche that is life descends

After Persephone into transparent woods below

With a green branch and Stygian tendernessBeneath her feet falls a blind swallow.

Ghosts crowd about the fugitive and hurry

To meet the new arrival with a prayer

They twist their withered weakened arms before her

Misunderstanding and with near despair.

Souls are like women and their trifles love:

Some hold a mirror, some perfumes that fizzle:

There's leafless wood of voices from above,

Dry lamentations fall in drops, like drizzle.

In light stampede not knowing where to start,

Soul does not recognize transparent grove of sage,

Breathes into mirror and then tarries to impartThe copper coin across the foggy passage.

x x x

Take from my open hands for your delightA bit of honey and a bit of sun

As willed to us the bees of Proserpina.

Not to untie again an unmoored boat,

And not to know a shadow shod in fur,

Nor yet to conquer fear of dreary lifetime:


62/68

To us remain but kisses in the night,

Fuzzy and shivering like little bees

That fall and die as they depart the hive.

They shimmer in transparent nigthtime breeze,

Their home is haunted forest of Taigetos,

They feast on mint, and honeycomb, and spacetime.

Take then my wild gift for your delight,

A simple wreath of withered little bees

That died as they changed honey into sun.


63/68

Dusk of Liberty

1Brothers, let's celebrate the dusk of liberty,

Let's celebrate this great and dusky Yule.

In boiling waters of the night like sea

The heavy wood has been submerged and pulls

In these dead years you rise above me

O sun, to judge us all and rule.

2

Let's celebrate the fated burden,

Which people's leader takes with tears.

Let's celebrate the twilight burden

Of power, it is very dear.

If you have heart, time, our warden,

While your ship sinks, you will hear.

3

In battle legions we have boundThe swallows, and now

Sun can't be seen, and all around

Things sparkle, chirp, and grow

And through dense net of dusk unbound

I cannot see the sun, and the earth flows.

4

But we will try: A giant, clumsy,

A screeching turning of the steering wheel.Earth flows. Get strong, men, don't be lazy

As with a plow part the ocean. Kneel,

We will remember in Lethean frenzy

That earth has cost us ten heavens still.


64/68

x x x

1On fearsome height stands wandering fire

But does star glimmer thus, or are eyes lying?

Transparent star, wandering fire

Your brother, Petropole, is dying.

2

On fearsome height the earthly dreams all burn

And a green star is flying.

Oh, if you be a star -- brother of earth and heaven --


3

A monstrous ship upon a fearsome height

Wings outspread, is flying.

Green star, you, in a gorgeous plight,


4Transparent spring upon Nieva turned black

Has broken. Wax of immortality melts as if crying.

Oh, if you be a star -- Petropole, look back!



65/68

The Swallow

1I have forgot the word that I had meant to say.

To palace of the shades flies a blind swallow

Upon clipped wings with shadows to play.

Night's song is in oblivion sung below.

2

Immortelle does not bloom. I cannot hear bird's song.

Transparent are the mantles of night's horse herd

In a dry creek an empty shuttle swims along

And even grasshoppers can't hear the lost word.

3

Slowly like curtain it grows, or temple yet,

Suddenly Antigone seems mad and lurches

Like a blind swallow she falls toward my feet

With Stygian tenderness and with green branches.

4O, if but to return the shame of see-through hands

And convex joy of dawning recognition,

I am afraid of weeping Aonids

Of fog, of ringing and of gaping apparition.

5

The mortal's power is to love and seek,

For him the sound into the palms will pour

But I forgot the word that I had meant to speakAnd fruitless thought returns to palace dour.

6

Not of the same the shadow speaks in turn

The girlfriend, Antigone, the swallow..

And on the lips, just like black ice, still burns

The memory of Stygian ringing from below.


66/68

x x x

For this that your arms I could not more tightly keep -For this that your tender saltwater lips I've foresaken -

As much as abhorrent to me is this ruin half-asleep -

I must in Acropolis wait till the city awakens.

The Aegeans ready the horse in the darkness profound,

With sharp-toothed blades into cracks they invade and

rupture

Dry rustle of blood in the ears simply would not die

down

Of you not a whisper remains, not a sight, not a

sculpture.

How could I have thought you'd return to me, how did I

dare?

Why did I abandon so early without a warning?The rooster had not sang his song, nor the hills been laid

bare,

And into the woodwork the axe had not torn yet this

morning.

Like transparent tears on the walls have appeared drops

of sap

And city is feeling its forested ribcage with fireThrough valves blood has rushed into life and then turned

on the tap

And three times to men have the mermaids called out of

the mire.

Where is my dear Troy, where's the palace, the women's

hall?


67/68

The tall starling-coop of King Priam is lying in shatters

And like a dry rain wooden arrows continue to fall

And more arrows just like a nutgrove arise in tatters.

The sting of last starfleck shall painlessly flicker away,

And morning will tap on the windowpane like a gray

swallow,

And slowly the day, like an ox once awakened in hay,

Will rustle awake on sharp steps, and the light will

follow.

x x x

Under a coxcomb of a milky white

Isaac has built a graying pigeon cage

The crozier irritates the graying quietGradations of the air the heart can gauge.

There's wandering ghost of century-old requiem

Then the grand bearing of the shroud

Genessarian* darkness in decrepit seine

Of Lenten week, a voice that weeps aloud.

Upon warm altars smoke glowsAnd then a priest exudes an orphaned cry

A regal man: there is clean snow

On the shoulders, and savage porphyry.

Sophie's and Peter's Grand Cathedrals that withstood

Centuries; warehouses of air and light

Grain hangars of the universal good


68/68

And corn-kilns of New Testament.

In the harsh troubled year, not to your side

The spirit drags across the steps in peace,The wolf's trail of disaster reaches wide

And will not change over the centuries.

Free is the slave who once has conquered fear

And who beyond all measure kept, through grief,

In deep cornbins, in chilly granaries

The grain of utter and complete belief.

* Gennesarian: ref. Luke 5:1, Matthew 14:34, and Mark

6:53, a Biblical town.

Documents

TRISTIA (Osip Mandelstam)