Osip Mandelshtam
1 January 1924

Whoever kisses time’s ancient nodding head
will remember later, like a loving son,
how the old man lay down to sleep
in the drift of wheat outside the window.
He who has opened the eyes of the age,
two large sleepy apples with inflamed lids,
hears forever after the roar of rivers
swollen with the wasted, lying times.

The age is a despot with two sleepy apples
to see with, and a splendid mouth of earth.
When he dies he’ll sink onto the numb
arm of his son, who’s already senile.
I know the breath growing weaker by the day
Not long not till the simple song
of the wrongs of earth is cut off,
and a tin seal put on the lips.

O life of earth! O dying age!
I’m afraid no one will understand you
but the man with the helpless smile
of one who has lost himself.
O the pain of peeling back the raw eyelids
to look for a lost word, and with lime
slaking in the veins, to hunt
for night herbs for a tribe of strangers!

The age. In the sick son’s blood the deposit of lime
is hardening. Moscow’s sleeping like a wooden coffin.
There’s no escaping the tyrant century.
After all these years the snow still smells of apples.
I want to run away from my own doorstep,
but where? Out in the street it’s dark,
and my conscience glitters ahead of me
like salt strewn on the pavement.

Somehow I’ve got myself set for a short journey
through the back lanes, past thatched eaves, starling houses,
an everyday passer-by, in a flimsy coat,
forever trying to button the lap-robe.
Street after street flashes past,
the frozen runners crunch like apples;
can’t get the button through the button-hole,
it keeps slipping out of my fingers.

The winter night thunders
like iron hardware through the Moscow streets.
Knocks like a frozen fish, or billows in steam,
flashing like a carp in a rosy tea-room.
Moscow is Moscow again. I say hello to her.
‘Don’t be stern with me; never mind.
I still respect the brotherhood
of the deep frost, and the pike’s justice.’

The pharmacy’s raspberry globe shines onto the snow.
Somewhere an Underwood typewriter’s rattled.
The sleigh-driver’s back, the snow knee-deep,
what more do you want? They won't touch you, won’t kill you.
Beautiful winter, and the goat sky
has crumbled into stars and is burning with milk.
And the lap-robe flaps and rings
like horse-hair against the frozen runners.

And the lanes smoked like kerosene stoves,
swallowed snow, raspberry, ice,
endlessly peeling, like a Soviet sonatina,
recalling nineteen-twenty.
The frost is smelling of apples again.
Could I ever betray to gossip-mongers
the great vow to the Fourth Estate
and oaths solemn enough for tears?

Who else will you kill? Who else will you worship?
What other lie will you dream up?
There’s the Underwood’s cartilage. Hurry, rip out a key,
you’ll find a little bone of a pike.
And in the sick son’s blood the deposit of lime
will melt, and there’ll be sudden blessèd laughter.
But the simple sonatina of typewriters
is only a faint shade of those great sonatas.

Translated by Clarence Brown and W. S. Merwin