"Osip Mandelstam. Tristia (tranlsation by Ilya Shambat) (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

And from the pedestral of the archangel
I watch the city at a wondrous height
In Acropolis sadness has deranged me
For Russian name and Russian beauty's sight.

That we of wind-town dream it is no wonder,
Where pigeons reign upon the hot blue beams
Where blackness sings Orthodox churches' wonder,
Florence in Moscow so tender seems

And the five-headed Moscow cathedrals
With soul Italian and Russian both
Remind me of Aurora's reappearance
With Russian surname and draped in fur clothes.



x x x

Upon a horse-sleigh laid to brim with straw
And covered barely with hides and birch,
We rode around the lumbering Moscow
From Sparrow Hills to a familiar church.

On Uglich street the kids are playing babki
And from a stove exudes bread's sweet smell
Through street without a hat they take me
Three candles burn in tower near a bell.

Not just three candles burned, but three encounters,
One of them God himself had known
Forth did not happen -- and the Rome still further -
And never did he love the ancient Rome.

The sled was diving into blackened snowdunes
And from the darkness people poured like weeds.
Thin peasant men and hateful-looking women
Right at the gate were separating seeds.

The distance, wet, had blackened with birds' trails,
And hands tied down inside the sleigh grew tired.
They drive the prince -- the body numbs and pales -
And then they set the orange straw on fire.



x x x


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