Osip Mandelshtam
The finder of a horseshoe

We look at woods and say:
Here is a forest of ships and of masts,
The pink pines
Stand free to their tops from mossy accretions,
They should creak in a storm
As do lone-standing stone pines
In the infuriated foresdess air;
Beneath the salty heel of wind the plumb line stands firm,
                                      driven sheer to the dancing deck.

And a seafarer
In the unfettered thirst of emptiness,
Dragging through the soaking hollows the fragile instrument
                                                                       of the surveyor,
Compares the rough surface of the seas
Against the attraction of the landward mass.

And inhaling the odor
Of resinous tears sweating out through the joints
                                                            of the ship,
Admiring the decking,
Riveted and squared into bulkheads,
Not by the peaceful carpenter of Bethlehem but by another,
The father of voyages and seafarers’ friend,
We say:

And they too once stood on dry land,
As uncomfortable as an ass’s back,
At their tops oblivious of their roots,
On a famous mountain ridge,
And they soughed beneath fresh torrential rains,
Unsuccessfully suggesting to heaven that their noble load
Be exchanged for a pinch of salt.

From what should we begin?
Everything splits and sways.
The air’s atremble from comparison.
No single word is better than any other,
The earth is buzzing with metaphor,
And light two-wheelers,
Garishly harnessed to flocks of straining birds,
Collapse in fragments,
Rivaling the snorting favorites of the tracks.

Thrice-blessed is he who enshrines a name in song;
A song embellished by a name
Lives longer than all others —
It stands out among the rest by the frontlet on its brow,
That heals it from amnesia, from the stupefying smell —
Whether the closeness of a man,
Or the odor exuded by a strong beast’s coat,
Or simply the scent of savory rubbed between the palms.
Air can get as dark as water and all things in it
                                                                 swim like fish,
Thrusting the element past with their fins,
For it is solid, elastic, slightly warmed —
A crystal where wheels turn and horses shy,
The damp black soil of Neaira, each night
                                                               turned up anew
By pitchforks, tridents, mattocks, plows,
The air’s kneaded as thickly as the ground —
One can’t get out from it, nor easily get in.
A rustle rushes through the trees like a green
                                                                 rounders bat;
But the children play at five-stones with the vertebras
                                                              of dead beasts.
And the fragile chronography of our times is drawing
                                                                 to a close.
Thank you for that which has been:
I myself went wrong, was mistaken, made an error
                                                      in my calculations.
The era echoed like a golden orb,
Hollow, cast, not supported by anyone,
And responded “Yes” and “No” to each touch.
As a child can answer equally:
“I’ll give you an apple” or “I shan’t give it to you,”
While his face is an accurate cast of his voice as he
                                                          utters the words.

The sound continues to ring though the source
                                           of the sound has gone.
A horse lies in the dust and snorts in a sweat.
But the steep curve of its neck
Still retains remembrance of the race in its
                                 outstretched hooves —
When there were not just four,
But as many hooves as stones in the road,
Redoubled in four dimensions
By the number of thuds on the ground of the racehorse
                                                          seething with heat.

Thus,
The finder of the horseshoe
Blows the dust off it
And polishes it with wool till it shines,
Then
He hangs it on his door,
For it to rest,
And to free it from the need to strike sparks from
                                                                        flint.

Human lips,
                   with nothing more to say,
Retain the shape of their last uttered word,
And a sense of heaviness stays in the hand,
Though a jug
                     being carried home
                                                   has half spilled over.

That which I’m saving now is not me speaking
But has been dug from the earth like grains of fossilized
                                                                                wheat.

Some
          stamp coins with lions,
Others —
            with heads;
All kinds of copper, bronze, and gold wafers,
Equally honored, lie in the earth.
The age has tried to chew them and left on each
                                        the clench of its teeth.
Time clips me like a coin,
And there isn’t enough of me left for myself.

Translated by Bernard Meares