Osip Mandelstam
Four from The Voronezh Notebooks
Translated by Matvei Yankelevich and John High
February 11, 1937
Like wood and copper — as in Favorsky’s flight —
In the battened air, these days and I are neighbors,
Together we are led along by layered fleets
Of sawed oak logs and maple-colored copper.
And in the rings, the sap still fighting, bleeding out,
But is the heart no more than frightened meat?
I’m guilty in my heart — yet I am part
Of this eternally-expanding hour’s heart.
This hour, nourishing numberless friends,
Hour of fearsome public squares in joyful glances…
My eyes will once more roundly trace the edge
Of this whole square, its forests of banners.
February 7-11, 1937
Still it recalls the wear and tear of shoes,
The threadbare splendor of my soles,
As I remember it: its many tangled voices,
Black-haired, abut the Mount of David.
Pistachio passages for streets
Touched up with chalk or eggwhite:
Balcony’s slant — to horseshoe — horse — and back,
Little oaks, languid elms, and lacewood...
The feminine tether of curly letters,
Makes the eyes drunk in the husk of light—
City so able, anchored, deep-running to its core,
Into youthful summer, growing old.
.
March 3, 1937
As for your pity and your mercy, France,
I plead for your chèvrefeuille, beg your earth,
For the truth of your doves and the lies of diminutive
Vintners fenced in by their cheesecloth nets.
Your closely-cropped air in an easy December
Freezing to frost — moneyed, offended…
But even a violet in prison: losing its mind in boundlessness!
A song whistling like a little girl reckless and teasing.
Where, washing kings away with it,
July’s crooked street surged and seethed,
But now in Paris, Arles, and Chartres,
Charlie Chaplin governs, big-hearted —
Exact, disheveled in his oceanic bowler,
Puppet-like, he sashays with the flower girl…
Where the shawl of the spider’s web with a rose on its breast
Turns to stone in a two-towered fever-sweat,
A shame, this merry-go-round turning about
In airy gratitude as it breathes in the city —
Bow and bare your neck, godless woman
With those golden, nanny-goat eyes,
Tease the thickets of miserly roses
With your wry, throaty shears.
March 4, 1937
I spied a lake stood steep, precipitous, on end —
The fish played with a rose sliced crossways, wheel-like,
In their fresh-built, freshwater home.
A lion and a fox brawled in a little boat.
Afflictions peered into three barking gates
As foes of undiscovered arching vaults.
Gazelles leapt clear across the violet span,
And suddenly the cliff of towers breathed a sigh.
Quenched with vapor, the honest sandstone made its stand.
Here, in the master craftsmen’s cricket-city,
From the sweetwater stream, a schoolboy-ocean rises
And tosses water by the cupful at the clouds.
Like wood and copper — as in Favorsky’s flight —
In the battened air, these days and I are neighbors,
Together we are led along by layered fleets
Of sawed oak logs and maple-colored copper.
And in the rings, the sap still fighting, bleeding out,
But is the heart no more than frightened meat?
I’m guilty in my heart — yet I am part
Of this eternally-expanding hour’s heart.
This hour, nourishing numberless friends,
Hour of fearsome public squares in joyful glances…
My eyes will once more roundly trace the edge
Of this whole square, its forests of banners.
February 7-11, 1937
Still it recalls the wear and tear of shoes,
The threadbare splendor of my soles,
As I remember it: its many tangled voices,
Black-haired, abut the Mount of David.
Pistachio passages for streets
Touched up with chalk or eggwhite:
Balcony’s slant — to horseshoe — horse — and back,
Little oaks, languid elms, and lacewood...
The feminine tether of curly letters,
Makes the eyes drunk in the husk of light—
City so able, anchored, deep-running to its core,
Into youthful summer, growing old.
.
March 3, 1937
As for your pity and your mercy, France,
I plead for your chèvrefeuille, beg your earth,
For the truth of your doves and the lies of diminutive
Vintners fenced in by their cheesecloth nets.
Your closely-cropped air in an easy December
Freezing to frost — moneyed, offended…
But even a violet in prison: losing its mind in boundlessness!
A song whistling like a little girl reckless and teasing.
Where, washing kings away with it,
July’s crooked street surged and seethed,
But now in Paris, Arles, and Chartres,
Charlie Chaplin governs, big-hearted —
Exact, disheveled in his oceanic bowler,
Puppet-like, he sashays with the flower girl…
Where the shawl of the spider’s web with a rose on its breast
Turns to stone in a two-towered fever-sweat,
A shame, this merry-go-round turning about
In airy gratitude as it breathes in the city —
Bow and bare your neck, godless woman
With those golden, nanny-goat eyes,
Tease the thickets of miserly roses
With your wry, throaty shears.
March 4, 1937
I spied a lake stood steep, precipitous, on end —
The fish played with a rose sliced crossways, wheel-like,
In their fresh-built, freshwater home.
A lion and a fox brawled in a little boat.
Afflictions peered into three barking gates
As foes of undiscovered arching vaults.
Gazelles leapt clear across the violet span,
And suddenly the cliff of towers breathed a sigh.
Quenched with vapor, the honest sandstone made its stand.
Here, in the master craftsmen’s cricket-city,
From the sweetwater stream, a schoolboy-ocean rises
And tosses water by the cupful at the clouds.