Osip Mandelshtam
Sisters heaviness and tenderness...

Sisters heaviness and tenderness — your signs are the same.
Bees and wasps are sucking the heavy rose.
Man is dying. The heated sand is chilling,
And yesterday's sun is carried away on a black stretcher.

Ah, heavy honeycombs and tender nets,
It is easier to lift a stone than to repeat your name!
I have a single care left in this world,
A golden care — to overcome the burden of time.

I drink the misty air like dark water
Time is ploughed, and a rose was the soil.
In the slow whirlpool the heavy and tender roses,
Heaviness and tenderness are entwined into twin wreaths.

Translated by D. Smirnov-Sadovsky