Osip Mandelshtam
You`re not alone. You haven`t died...

You're not alone. You haven't died,
while you still,beggar-woman at your side,
take pleasure in the grandeur of the plain,
the gloom, the cold,the whirlwinds of snow.

In sumptuous penury, in mighty poverty
live comforted and at rest —
your days and nights are blest,
your sweet-voiced labour without sin.

Unhappy he, a shadow of himself,
whom a bark astounds and the wind mows down,
and to be pitied he, more dead than alive,
who begs handouts from a ghost.

Translated by Andrew Davis