18 June 2013

Osip Mandelstam [Numéro Cinq]

from The Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam, tr. Clarence Brown and W. S. Merwin:

116

Take from my palms, to soothe your heart,

a little honey, a little sun,

in obedience to Persephone’s bees.

You can’t untie a boat that was never moored,

nor hear a shadow in its furs,

nor move through thick life without fear.

For us, all that’s left is kisses

tattered as the little bees

that die when they leave the hive.

Deep in the transparent night they’re still humming,

at home in the dark wood on the mountain,

in the mint and lungwort and the past.

But lay to your heart my rough gift,

this unlovely dry necklace of dead bees

that once made a sun out of honey.

— November 1920