Вооруженный зреньем узких ос
Осип Мандельштам


Вооруженный зреньем узких ос,
Сосущих ось земную, ось земную,
Я чую все, с чем свидеться пришлось,
И вспоминаю наизусть и всуе...

И не рисую я, и не пою, И не вожу смычком черноголосым: Я только в жизнь впиваюсь и люблю Завидовать могучим, хитрым осам. О, если б и меня когда-нибудь могло Заставить, сон и смерть минуя, Стрекало воздуха и летнее тепло Услышать ось земную, ось земную...

8 февраля 1937

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The wasps
Osip Mandelstam


Armed with the vision of the slender wasps
sucking at the axis of the earth, the axis of the earth.
I remember all that I have had to meet
and recall it by heart and in vain.

I neither draw nor sing
nor wield die dark-voiced bow of the violin:
I only pierce life with my sting and love
to envy the powerful, shrewd wasps.

Oh, if only I, too, could someday be
forced past sleep and death
by the air's sting and summer's warmth
to hear the axis of the earth, the axis of the earth...

8 February 1937

Translated by Clarence Brown and David McDuff

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The wasps
Osip Mandelstam


Armed with the eye of the arrowing wasp,
Plunging to the pith of urge, churn of earth,
I move by feel and smell among the simple given,
Gift by gift reciting now, scar by scar...

Yet here is no lasting image, no heaven coaxed from string,
And do not call this cry a song.
Little cut in life, rut in time, I long
For the sly start, the true inscrutable, mindrhyme, sleepsting.

Oh, to be made, marred, mired deep in time, to grasp,
When like a diver all of summer holds its breath
—Immune to miracles, deflecting death—
The very churn and urge, pith and earth...

8 February 1937

Translated by Clarence Brown and David McDuff