Translated from Osip Mandelshtam by Ilya Shambat
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Take from my open hands for your delight
A 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:
To us remain but kisses in the night,
Fuzzy and ****vering like little bees
That fall and die as they depart the hive.
They ****mmer 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.
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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 cherish
The 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.
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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.
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Your fabulous enunciation -
Hot whistling of a bird of prey,
Create a living exhaltation
Of silken eyelashes, I 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.
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.
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 stack
And 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".
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?
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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 heaven gets 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:
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!
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I know unthinkable to vision is deception
And fabric of my dream transparent is and tight -
With divine lighntess we envision our creation
And stars become attainable through spindle's flight -
When, fanned by wind from heavenly abodes,
It breaks away from torpid earth at last,
And the unfathomable rhythm opens
The heaven to one lost in languor and in dust.
Thus let us flee away from torment's regions
At an etheric messenger's hand call -
Into the place, where can be found heaven's ringing
And unseen palace tower stand over all!
Be the avenger of unseen worlds, artist
To unexisting ones existence do impart;
Your tripod drape with cloud dressed in mist
And catch the flying heaven of falling stars!
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Translation by Ilya Shambat
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