Osip Mandelshtam
Concert on the Station (Pavlovsk)

You cannot breathe, the ground with maggots seethes,
And not a single star can speak;
But — God can see — there’s music up above us:
The station trembles with Aonian song,
And ripped in shreds with locomotive whistles
The screeching air resolves again.

The enormous park — the station’s glassy orb —
The iron world is once again enchanted.
For the noisy banquet in Elysian fog
Triumphantly a train is whisked away.

A peacock’s scream — a fortepiano roar —
I’m late — I’m terrified — it’s all a dream.

I go into the glass forest of the station,
The screeching squadrons in commotion and in tears.
The wild beginning of the choir of night —
A scent of roses in decaying earth!
Under a glassy sky the native shadows
Pass the long night among the wandering crowds.

It seems to me that filled with song and music
That wretchedly the whole iron world is trembling.
I lean back sadly in the glassy hall.
Where are you going then? At the dear shadow’s funeral feast
For the last time now music is sounding for us.

____
The above poem was suggested by the famous musical concerts on the Pavlovsk station, which incidentally are mentioned in Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot. In lines 6 and 14, the original Russian word which I have translated by screech also means to ‘fiddle’ or ‘play on the violin’ and a valuable double entendre is lost in my English version. — P. R.

Translated by Peter Russell