Osip Mandelstam
translated by Alistair Noon
So that the sandstone will keep its friends,
the rain and the wind, safe inside,
they scratch out scores of herons
and bottles within bottles of light.
The state shame of the Egyptians
is decorated with the best dogs,
and beneath the trivial pyramid's tip
the dead have received their bits and bobs.
Full-blooded hero, you were something else,
a comforting, incorrigible balladeer –
we can still hear that gnashing of teeth you left us,
plaintiff under the law of good cheer...
Into twin testaments he unwound that tangle
of goods that belonged to the dull,
chirped his farewells and then gave back
a world as profound as a skull.
He lived next door to the Gothic, misbehaved,
spitting on laws that spiders had spun,
that cheeky schoolboy and thieving angel,
the incomparable Monsieur Villon,
burglar to the celestial clergy.
It’s no disgrace to sit beside him,
and before the end of the world
the voices of the skylarks will sing.
18 March 1937
The full-weight ingots of Roman nights,
the female form young Goethe spotted –
hold me at fault, but leave me in pocket:
many are the depths in an outlaw's life.
June 1935
Earphones, you snitch, don’t go thinking
I won’t remember these Voronezh nights:
the vin d'Ay of the voice I'm still drinking,
and from Red Square at midnight, the sirens...
What’s the Metro like then? Well keep that to yourself,
but don’t ask how far the spring buds have got.
Kremlin clock, up there, your bells
are the speech of the cosmos shrunk to a full stop.
April 1935
So that the sandstone will keep its friends,
the rain and the wind, safe inside,
they scratch out scores of herons
and bottles within bottles of light.
The state shame of the Egyptians
is decorated with the best dogs,
and beneath the trivial pyramid's tip
the dead have received their bits and bobs.
Full-blooded hero, you were something else,
a comforting, incorrigible balladeer –
we can still hear that gnashing of teeth you left us,
plaintiff under the law of good cheer...
Into twin testaments he unwound that tangle
of goods that belonged to the dull,
chirped his farewells and then gave back
a world as profound as a skull.
He lived next door to the Gothic, misbehaved,
spitting on laws that spiders had spun,
that cheeky schoolboy and thieving angel,
the incomparable Monsieur Villon,
burglar to the celestial clergy.
It’s no disgrace to sit beside him,
and before the end of the world
the voices of the skylarks will sing.
18 March 1937
The full-weight ingots of Roman nights,
the female form young Goethe spotted –
hold me at fault, but leave me in pocket:
many are the depths in an outlaw's life.
June 1935
Earphones, you snitch, don’t go thinking
I won’t remember these Voronezh nights:
the vin d'Ay of the voice I'm still drinking,
and from Red Square at midnight, the sirens...
What’s the Metro like then? Well keep that to yourself,
but don’t ask how far the spring buds have got.
Kremlin clock, up there, your bells
are the speech of the cosmos shrunk to a full stop.
April 1935
Translation copyright Alistair Noon 2014
Osip Mandelstam was born in 1891 and grew
up in St Petersburg. He traveled in the Caucasus, was exiled to the city of
Voronezh, and was deported to a labor camp in the Soviet Far East, where he
died in 1938. He published two books of poetry, Stone and Tristia, in his
lifetime, while other work has appeared posthumously as The Moscow and Voronezh Notebooks: Poems 1930-1937.
Alistair Noon’s first full-length collection is Earth Records from Nine Arches Press (2012), shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. A full-length collection of his translations of Mandelstam is in preparation. Some excerpts from a collaboration with Giles Goodland appeared in Molly Bloom 2, here.
Alistair Noon’s first full-length collection is Earth Records from Nine Arches Press (2012), shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. A full-length collection of his translations of Mandelstam is in preparation. Some excerpts from a collaboration with Giles Goodland appeared in Molly Bloom 2, here.
