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A MAN ON FOOT by Osip Mandelshtam (translated from the Russian by Alistair Noon)

October 1, 2010 Contributed By: Alistair Noon, Osip Mandelshtam

To M.L. Lozinskii

Whenever I’m near mysterious mountain tops,
there’s a fear I sense but can’t defeat.
Watching the skies, I’m content with the swallows,
and love the way a flight of bells will peal.

As if some man walking out of antiquity
who can hear the growth of snow, I’m crossing
a chasm on sagging bridges, it seems,
and the whole of time ticks on stone clocks.

No, I’m no traveller whose name lies on
some faded pages, where it stays and gleams.
Grief sings inside me. My feelings

and the bells have now become one.
Avalanches roll in the hills for real.
But music won’t save me from the drop.

1912

Return to table of contents for Issue 3 Fall 2010

Filed Under: Poetry, Translation Posted On: October 1, 2010

Further Reading

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Evergreen is bone and pigment. Grows projectile out of ground. / Boughs snapped for thick blood. Resin drains from once-limbs / like beads of paint—is this rumor?

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He knew about the CIA. About Bolivia. Her Coke was sweating. She’d seen the movie. The T-shirts of Guevara in that iconic black beret in the days before the army had him cornered. They gave him up for maize, he says. Laughs. Sizes-up the guests at nearby tables. How had they connected on the Internet? What whispers […]

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