Voronezh Notebooks by Osip Mandelstam

Author:Osip Mandelstam [Mandelstam, Osip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59017-911-6
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2015-12-03T05:00:00+00:00

37

When the goldfinch, in his airy confection,

Suddenly gets angry, begins to quake,

His spite sets off his scholar’s robes,

Shows to advantage his cute black cap.

And he slanders the hundred bars,

Curses the sticks and perches of his prison—

And the world’s turned completely inside out,

And surely there’s a forest Salamanca

For birds so smart, so disobedient.

December 1936

38

Like a postponed present,

That’s how winter feels—

From the first I’ve loved

Its uncertain extent.

Fear makes it beautiful,

Something terrible might occur—

Before this forestless circle

Even the crow’s lost his nerve.

But all that’s most powerful is tenuous—

Bright blue of these convexities—

Ice half-circles at the temple of the streams,

Lulling to a sleep without dreams...

December 29–30, 1936

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