Osip Mandelshtam
You may not have known this before...

You may not have known this before:
two brothers in France are called Edmond and Jules de Goncourt.
If they hadn’t been born and written as one, though two,
the French wouldn’t prize them the way that they do.

Two brothers, one head.
Top hats and frock coats in duet.
For Jules has only to sketch out a tale
and Edmond stops eating, goes pale.
One labours to make their novel still greater,
as the other whirls round an ice cream maker.

However it’s bucketing down, it’s proper
to put in an evening down the Grand Opera.
Whose paragraphs made more profits or losses?
Who cares. They pass each other their galoshes.

There isn’t a spot in the city, not nowhere,
they won’t turn into a première,
a concert party, a salon.
“One recently lunched with Flaubert.
Say what you will, mon frère,
but Bovary’s coming on.”

Translated by Alistair Noon