Osip Mandelshtam
Menagerie

1

A word of peace, rejected, stands
At start of an insulted era;
There's light inside a darkened cavern
And ether of the foreign lands;
Ether, of which we just could not,
Of which to breathe we did not want;
With voice of goats, deep and gaunt,
Priests are singing, hairy lot.

2

While goatlings and steer both
On foggy pastures were delaying
And friendly eagles were relaying
From shoulders of the sleepy rocks
Germans fed eagles on the rock
An Englishman a lion revered
And Gallic comb at once appeared
From out the mantle of a cock.

3

And now behold, the wild sage
Has grasped the steeple of Heracles,
And then the soil was shorn of sparkles,
Black and ungrateful like old age.
I'll take a dry stick in my palms
And wring from it a spark of fire,
Let into stream of night expire
The beasts aroused by my charms.

4

The cock, the lion, the brown, thin
Eagle and the tender bear —
We'll build a cage before the war
And warm with fire the animal skin.
And wine of time I also sing
The source of the Italian fable
As in the pre-aryan cradle
Tongues Slavic and Germanic ring.

5

You aren't too lazy, Italy,
To shake the chariots of Rome,
With gargling of domestic fowl
Having flown from menagerie?
And you, the hen, do not play rough:
The eagle here sits mean and hyped
What that for you and all your type
A heavy stone is not enough?

6

In the menagerie the beasts now reign,
We will get calmer for much longer,
And in its fullness will gush Volga,
As lighter water flows through Rhine.
And a wise man from days of yore
To foreigner will pay his honor
Like demi-god, in whirling fervor,
Dancing with river on her shore!

Translated by Ilya Shambat