Selected Poems: (Penguin Modern Classics)

James Greene's acclaimed translations of the poetry of Osip Mandelshtam, now in an extensively revised and augmented edition.

Table of Contents:
Selected PoemsForeword by Nadezhda Mandelshtam Foreword by Donald Davie Translator's Preface Introduction by Donald Rayfield From Stone (1913, 1916, 1923 and 1928) The careful muffled sound Suddenly, from the dimly lit hall To read only children's books On pale-blue enamel What shall I do with the body I've been given A sadness beyond words Words are unnecessary Silentium Ear-drums stretch their sensitive sail Like the shadow of sudden clouds I grew, rustling like a reed Sultry dusk covers the couch How slowly the horses move Light sows a meagre beam The sea-shell I hate the light In the haze your image No, not the moon, but a bright clock-face The traveller The casino The Lutheran Hagia Sophia Notre Dame Poisoned bread, satiated air Horses' hooves...The clatter There are orioles in the woods Nature is Roman, and mirrored in Rome Sleeplessness. Homer. Taut sails Herds of horses gaily neigh or graze Unpublished in the Struve/Filippov editions Newly reaped ears Two poems first published by Struve/Filippov, 1964 The hunters have trapped you The old men of Euripides, an abject throng From Tristia (1922) - How the splendour of these veils and of this dress We shall die in transparent Petropolis This night is irredeemable Disbelieving the miracle of resurrection Out of the bottle the stream of golden honey poured so slowly Spring's transparent-grey asphodels Tristia Sisters: heaviness and tenderness bear the same insignia Return to the incestuous lap When Psyche - life - descends among shades I have forgotten the word I wanted to say For the sake of delight Here is the pyx, like a golden sun Because I had to let go of your arms When the city moon looks out on the streets When, on my lips a singing name, I stepped I like the grey silences under the arches From Poems (1928) I was washing at night in the courtyard To some, winter is arrack and a blue-eyed punch Rosy foam of fatigue on his sensual lips As the leaven swells I climbed into the tousled hayloft My time Whoever finds a horsehoe 1 January 1924 Two Poems Published in NOVY MIR (1931 and 1932) Armenia Batyushkov Poems Published Posthumously Self-portrait I was only in a childish way connected with the established order Help me, O Lord, to get through this night For the resounding glory of eras to come I drink to the blossoming epaulette Impressionism Ariosto We exist, without sensing our country beneath us The body of King Arshak is unwashed Your narrow shoulders are to redden under scourges Black earth Yes, I'm lying in the earth, moving my lips You took away my seas and running jumps and sky My country conversed with me For those hundred-carat ingots, Roman nights A wave advances - one wave breaking another's backbone I shall perform a smoky rite I shall not return my borrowed dust I can't make sense of today Like a belated present I would sing of him who shifted the axis of the world You still haven't died, you're still not alone I look the frost in the face, alone Oh, these suffocating, asthmatic spaces of the steppes Plagued by their miraculous and all-engulfing hunger Don't compare: anyone alive is matchless What has contended with oxide and alloys The mounds of human heads disappear into the distance Listening, listening to the early ice A little boy, his red face shining like a lamp Where can I put myself this January? Like Rembrandt, martyr of light and dark Breaks of the rounded bays, shingle, blue I sing when my throat is damp, my soul dry Eyes once keener than a sharpened scythe Armed with the insight of narrow wasps I am plunged into a lion's den, a fort If our enemies take me Life's reticulations loosen, madness looms This is what I want most of all This azure island was exalted by its potters As if words were not enough I raise this greenness to my lips With her delightful uneven way of walking Notes and Acknowledgments Further Reading

About the Author :
Osip Mandelshtam ranks among the most significant Russian poets of the early twentieth century. Born in Warsaw, Poland, in or around 1891, his family soon moved to St. Petersburg, Russia. His poetry and prose were seen as critical of the Communist regime, forcing him into exile until 1937. He was later sent to a Soviet work camp, and the government reported he death in 1938, due to heart failure.