{ Sunday, November 28, 2004 }
From Language Hat I find a poem by Osip Mandelstam I've never read before. (I've not read much Mandelstam, a mistake, it appears):
Don't make comparisons: the living are incomparable.
I had come to terms with the flatness of the plains
with a sort of fond fear.
The curve of the sky was a disease to me.
I would turn and wait for some service or news
from my servant the air.
I would get ready for a journey
and sail along the arcs of travel that never began.
I am prepared to wander where there is more sky for me,
but the clear anguish will not let me go
away from the youthful hills of Voronezh
to the civilised hills, that I see so clearly in Tuscany.
—Osip Mandelstam, 18 January 1937
(translated by Richard McKane and Elizabeth McKane)
LINK | 6:41 PM | TB