Osip Mandelshtam
Under a coxcomb of a milky white...

Under a coxcomb of a milky white
Isaac has built a graying pigeon cage
The crozier irritates the graying quiet
Gradations of the air the heart can gauge.

There's wandering ghost of century-old requiem
Then the grand bearing of the shroud
Genessarian* darkness in decrepit seine
Of Lenten week, a voice that weeps aloud.

Upon warm altars smoke glows
And then a priest exudes an orphaned cry
A regal man: there is clean snow
On the shoulders, and savage porphyry.

Sophie's and Peter's Grand Cathedrals that withstood
Centuries; warehouses of air and light
Grain hangars of the universal good
And corn-kilns of New Testament.

In the harsh troubled year, not to your side
The spirit drags across the steps in peace,
The wolf's trail of disaster reaches wide
And will not change over the centuries.

Free is the slave who once has conquered fear
And who beyond all measure kept, through grief,
In deep cornbins, in chilly granaries
The grain of utter and complete belief.

Translated by Ilya Shambat