OSIP MANDELSTAM: I DETEST THE LIGHT

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

More in: Archive M-N, J.A. Woolf, Mandelstam, Osip, REPRESSION OF WRITERS, JOURNALISTS & ARTISTS, Woolf, J.A.