Osip Mandelshtam
Lamarck

Who is this old man, tongue-tied as a youth,
This fiery, halting patriarch,
Who fenced for nature's honour, though uncouth?
Why, naturally, the answer is Lamarck.

If all that lives is only a scribbled error,
Lasting a short, intestate day,
Then as I ride the Lamarckian escalator
The last step is the one I'll occupy.

I shall descend to ciliapedes, annelids,
Rustle past lizards and infernal serpents, tear
Down springy gang-planks and through watersheds,
Decline, decrease; like Proteus, disappear.

And I'll put on a thick and warty mantle,
I shall renounce my warm and scarlet blood,
Grow suckers on my hands and plunge my tentacles
Into the ocean's foaming flood.

We've now passed by the classes of insects waiting
With juicy eyes like goblets full of wine.
For as he says, Nature's disintegrating:
Sight will not be: you see for the last time.'

He said, 'You've had your fill of the sonorities,
Your love for Mozart was in vain, of course,
For now arachnid deafness creeps upon us,
This gap cannot be bridged by your weak forces' force.'

And nature withdrew from us, as if asserting
She had no need, she turned her back for good,
She took a long thin brain, which she inserted
Into a backbone scabbard, like a sword.

And she was late in lowering the drawbridge:
She left it up, forgetting those behind,
Those destined to have grass green round their gravestones,
Whose breath is scarlet, and their laughter lithe.

Translated by Andrew Reynolds