Osip Mandelshtam
The bread is poisoned and the air’s drunk dry...

The bread is poisoned and the air’s drunk dry,
How difficult to doctor wounds!
Joseph sold into Egypt
Could not have grieved so much for home!

As they ride beneath a star-studded sky,
Bedouin tribesmen with closed eyes
Compose wild legends
About the troubled day gone by.

So little is needed for inspiration:
An arrow quiver lost in the sands
Or a horse that someone has traded —
The fog of events is dispersing;

And if a song’s properly sung
With a full heart, then at last
All disappears; there remain
Just the singer, space, and the stars!

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The poem appears to have been written in the light of the expedition to Africa by Nikolai Gumilyov, Anna Akhmatova’s husband and one of the leading Acmeist poets. Gumilyov may be the singer referred to in the last line of the final stanza. [Translator’s note]

Translated by Bernard Meares