The muffled sound of the fruit as it carefully breaks from a branch, amid the incessant chant of the silence, deep in the woods. 1908 Return to table of contents for Issue 3 Fall 2010
Translation
A MAN ON FOOT by Osip Mandelshtam (translated from the Russian by Alistair Noon)
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 […]
[AGAINST THE PALE-BLUE ENAMEL] by Osip Mandelshtam (translated from the Russian by Alistair Noon)
Against the pale-blue enamel that April makes conceivable, the branches of the birch-trees stand and gradually turn into evening. Their pattern is sharp and complete, the stiffened gauze is fine, like a drawing that someone has neatly traced out on a plate of china. Some merciful artist has performed that design on the glassy heavens, […]
UNTITLED by Osip Mandelshtam (translated from the Russian by Tony Brinkley and Raina Kostova)
In the raw, moist forest, with a freezing measure, an impoverished light-beam sows the light-world. I am lingering—like the gray bird in my heart—incurring sorrow. What do I do with this wounded bird? The dying firmament fell silent— from its clouded tower, someone had taken the bell— and there height stands, mute and orphaned, like […]
BLACK EARTH by Osip Mandelshtam (translated from the Russian by Tony Brinkley and Raina Kostova)
Every mound—cultivated, black— every furrow combed with air— ground crumbled, figured as a chorus, the damp ground is my soil and freedom . . . Spring mornings, tilled—black to blue—unarmed, peaceful labor— a thousand ploughed-up rumors— in its radius unbounded. And, nevertheless, the ground—mistaken thunder—unmoved if you plead, even pounding the ground metrics—a decaying flute […]
THE BIRTH OF A SMILE by Osip Mandelshtam (translated from Russian by Tony Brinkley and Raina Kostova)
A child’s first smile, its mountain- bitterness and sweetness, its ends— not easily—extend and nurse the ocean’s anarchy. He is well—invincibly—his soothed lips toy with names and stitch a rainbow suture, his unlimited awareness of appearances. Stirred, the subsoil paws— the snail mouth flows and hastens— tuning lightly in amazement, in my eyes this Atlas […]
CZEŚĆ by Miriam Kotzin (translated from the English by Piotr Siwecki)
I. Slavonic Dances Your bare feet slap against the floor. I am afraid my rooms are too small for such leaping and whirling when you fill my white spaces with suddenly bright colors and I know that not even for you can I wear again in my hair red ribbons. We are on opposite shores […]
from PAN TADEUSZ, BOOK 11: THE YEAR 1812 by Adam Mickiewicz (translated by Leonard Kress)
When the cattle were driven to pasture that spring, although they were famished and lean, they reluctantly went and would not venture near the spring corn that was already green, sprouting up from the frozen ground. Instead, they fell to the ground where the earth was plowed, where each cow in turn lowered its head, […]
TRENY #7 (ON THE DEATH OF HIS DAUGHTER, URSZULA) by Jan Kochanowski (translated by Leonard Kress)
Hangars draped with clothes you’ll never wear; they miss the warm touch of your body. Moths will soon begin to feed upon that cloth; what rhetoric will persuade me now to clear your closet out? The iron sleeps beside the starch, ribbons remain wrinkled and knotted under the golden clasp…Flowers on your dress, potted in […]
TRENY #1 (ON THE DEATH OF HIS DAUGHTER, URSZULA) by Jan Kochanowski (translated by Leonard Kress)
Let all the cries of Heraclitus, and all Simonides’ dreary complaints and laments, along with other ancient malcontents, stoop-shouldered and sighing—let their tears fall as they cross my threshold for this wake to help me mourn my daughter, to seal her casket. Help me, a father like a mother nightingale— her nest discovered by a […]
