To read only children's books, treasure
Only childish thoughts, throw
Grown-up things away
And rise from deep sorrows.

I'm tired to death of life,
I accept nothing it can give me,
But I love my poor earth
Because it's the only one I've seen.

In a far-off garden I swung
On a simple wooden swing,
And I remember dark tall firs
In a hazy fever.

—Osip Mandelshtam
[trans. James Green]
(4) 1908

Words are unnecessary,
There being nothing to learn:
How sad and exemplary
Is an animal's dark heart!

It has no urge to instruct
And no use for words,
And swims like a young dolphin
Along the grey gulfs of the world.

(11) 1909

With her delightful uneven way of walking,
Limping on the empty earth,
A halting freedom draws on.
It seems that a clear conjecture lingers in her gait—
Something to do with this Spring weather,
Original mother of the sepulchral dome.
And this shall always be beginning.

There are women who are natives of the sodden earth:
Their every step a hollow sobbing,
Their calling to accompany the risen,
To be first to meet the dead.
And we should trespass to demand caresses of them,
And to part from them is beyond our strength.

But whatever shall be is a promise only.

(from 394) 4 May 1937