Osip Mandelshtam
To A. A. A.

(Akhmatova)

Preserve my speech forever for its taste of sadness and smoke,
For its resin of mutual forbearance, for its tar of conscience and work.
So Novgorod well water must be sweet and black,
To reflect as seven fins a Christmastide star.

And for this, my father, my coarse helper and friend,
I — brother cast out, black sheep of my nation —
I promise to hew such thick well balks as Tartars could use
To lower princes down in them on a bucket.

If these cold axman’s blocks would only show me some love,
As when aiming at death, skittles fall in a garden,
For this I’d spend life clad in just an iron shirt
If Tsar Peter’d behead me, I’d go find an ax in the forest.

Translated by Bernard Meares