Osip Mandelshtam
Black Earth

Hallowed and black, it’s all under nurture,
all horse’s shoulder, all air and care,
all of it crumbling, one huge choir –
my land and liberty’s clods of damp turf.

The black turns blue as they plough at dawn;
foundation of unarmed labour, a thousand
hills whose murmurs succumbed to the foreshare:
the district doesn’t fit with the land that surrounds us.

It’s a sledgehammer though, a faux pas, this earth:
it allows no appeals as you thud down your head,
with its mouldering flutes, puts your ears on alert,
will till them for spring with its morning clarinet.

How well that rich layer lies on the plough,
how well the steppe sits on a crankshaft in April!
So I greet you, Black Earth: be round-eyed and stout…
The black-tongued silence that’s found in labour.

Translated by Alistair Noon