J.A. Woolf

OSIP MANDELSTAM: I DETEST THE LIGHT

Mandelstam

Osip Mandelstam

(1891-1938)

I detest the light…

I detest the light

Of tedious stars.

Hello, my old delirium,

The tower’s crenellated pinnacle!

Stone, turn to lace

Become a spider’s web,

With your thin needle, wound

The empty breast of the sky.

My own turn will come,

I feel the stretching of my wings.

But where will the arrow

Of living thought fly?

Perhaps having used up my path,

And my time, I will come back:

– There I could not love,

– Here I fear to love . . .

1912

Osip Mandelstam poetry

Transl. J.A. Woolf

fleursdumal.nl magazine