«The Greeks gathered for war. / The breath-taking island of Salamis / that hostile hands had torn from them / lay in view of the Athenian harbour. Now friends from another island / have come to fit out our ships. / The English have never much liked / the sweet soil that is Europe’s. C...»
«One night I was washing in the yard, / above me a sky of jostling stars — / like salt on an axe, each beam — / the barrel near-frozen to the brim. The gates were shut and locked; / believe me, the earth is strict. / You won’t find a principle cleaner / than the truth there is in f...»
«I’m back in the city I’d walk till I cried, / that I knew to my veins and glands as a child. Back now in Leningrad. Quicker and quicker, / gulp down the fish oil in the lamps by the river. Make friends with December’s daylight fast, / where a yolk is mixed into the sinister tar. Peter...»
«What street are we on? / This is Mandelstam Road. / Damned if I know what that name means. / It’s like a bottle you can’t get the top off. / It sounds all twisted and not very clean. The way he did things could have been straighter, / his self-control a little greater, / and that’...»