Osip Mandelshtam
I drink to military asters...

I drink to military asters, to all that I’m censured about,
To the fur coats of nobles, to asthma, to the jaundiced Petersburg day,

To the music of pines in Savoie, gasoline on the Champs-Elysees,
To roses in a Rolls-Royce saloon, to Parisian pictures’ oil paint.

I drink to the surf of Biscay, to a jug of cream from the Alps,
To English girls’ redheaded hauteur, and distant colonial quinine;

I drink but still have to choose between wines:
Sparkling Asti Spumante or Chateauneuf-de-Pape.

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Either military decorations or the gold braid of epaulettes. The things toasted in the poem all evoke the Western bourgeois world no longer accessible to Soviet citizens as the right to travel abroad disappeared. [Translator’s note]

Translated by Bernard Meares