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greatpoetry2010-02-07 10:21 pm
cantahar.livejournal.com) wrote in greatpoetry2010-02-07 10:21 pm
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# 330
The idol is motionless inside the hill,
an endless serenity in the ordered rooms.
Drops of oil strung round his neck
watch over the tides of sleep.
When he was a boy with a tame peacock
they gave him a rainbow to eat
and milk in clay roses
and they surrounded him with scarlet.
Now every bone is tied in a trance.
The knees are a man's, the shoulders and arms are a man's.
The whole of his mouth is a smile.
Thinking bone by bone, feeling with his forehead,
laboriously he resurrects what it was to be human
-Osip Mandelstam, translated by Clarence Brown & W. S. Merwin
The idol is motionless inside the hill,
an endless serenity in the ordered rooms.
Drops of oil strung round his neck
watch over the tides of sleep.
When he was a boy with a tame peacock
they gave him a rainbow to eat
and milk in clay roses
and they surrounded him with scarlet.
Now every bone is tied in a trance.
The knees are a man's, the shoulders and arms are a man's.
The whole of his mouth is a smile.
Thinking bone by bone, feeling with his forehead,
laboriously he resurrects what it was to be human
-Osip Mandelstam, translated by Clarence Brown & W. S. Merwin