Foreword by Nadezhda Mandelshtam xv
Foreword by Donald Davie xvii
Translator’s Preface xxi
Introduction by Donald Rayfield xxvii
FROM STONE (1913, 1916, 1923 AND 1928)
Fruit breaking loose from tree 3
You slipped out in a light shawl 3
To read only children’s books 3
April-blue enamel 3
What shall I do with the body I’ve been given 4
An inexpressible sadness 5
Newly-reaped ears of early wheat 5
Words are unnecessary 5
Silentium 6
The ear-drums stretch their sensitive sail 6
Like the shadow of sudden clouds 7
I grew out of a dangerous swamp 7
Sultry dusk covers the couch 8
How slowly the horses move 8
Light sows a meagre beam 8
The sea-shell 9
It may be, night, you don’t need me 9
I loathe the light 10
No, not the moon, but the bright clock-face 11
The one who walks 11
The casino 12
The Lutheran 12
Hagia Sophia 13
Notre Dame 14
Poisoned bread, and satiated air 15
Horses’ hooves … The clatter 16
Golden orioles are in the woods, and length of vowels 16
Nature is Roman, and mirrored in Rome 16
Sleeplessness. Homer. Stretched sail 17
Herds of horses graze or gaily neigh 17
You have fallen for the hunters’ lure 18
In Euripides the old men 18
FROM TRISTIA (1922)
– How the splendour of these veils and of this dress 21
We shall leave our bones in transparent Petropolis 22
This night is irredeemable 22
Disbelieving the miracle of resurrection 23
Out of the bottle the stream of golden honey… 24
Spring’s clear-grey 25
Tristia 26
Sisters: heaviness and sweetness – the same insignia 27
Return to the incestuous lap 28
When Psyche, who is life, descends among shades 28
I have forgotten the word I wanted to say 29
For the sake of delight 30
Here is the pyx, it hangs in the air 31
Because I had to let go of your arms 31
When the city moon looks out on the avenues 32
On my lips a singing name, I stepped 32
I like the grey silences under the arches 33
FROM POEMS (1928)
I was washing at night in the courtyard 37
To some, winter is a blue sky of steaming wine and nuts 37
Rosy foam of fatigue on his sensual lips 38
As the leaven swells 39
I climbed into the tousled hayloft 39
My time 40
Whoever finds a horseshoe 41
1 January 1924 44
TWO POEMS PUBLISHED IN NOVYY MIR, 1931 AND 1932
from Armenia 46
Batyushkov 47
POEMS PUBLISHED POSTHUMOUSLY
Self-portrait 51
I was only in a childish way connected with the world of power 51
Wolf 52
I drink to the blossoming epaulette 52
Help me, O Lord, to survive this night 53
Impressionism 53
Ariosto 54
We exist, without sensing our country beneath us 55
from Journey to Armenia 56
Your narrow shoulders are to redden under scourges 57
Black earth 57
Yes, I’m lying in the earth, moving my lips 58
You took away my seas, and running jumps, and sky 58
My country conversed with me 58
Those hundred-carat ingots, Roman nights 59
The wave advances – one wave breaking another’s backbone 59
I shall perform a smoky rite 59
I shall not return my borrowed dust to the earth 60
Now today is yellow-mouthed, idiotic 60
Like a belated present 60
I would sing of him who shifted the axis of the world 61
I still haven’t died, I’m still not alone 61
I look the frost in the face, alone 62
Asthmatic sloth of asphyxiating steppes 62
Plagued by miraculous hunger 63
Don’t compare: anything alive is matchless 63
What has contended with oxide and alloys 64
The mounds of human heads disappear into the distance 64
I’m listening, listening to the early ice 64
A little boy, his red face shining like a lamp 65
Where can I put myself this January 65
Like Rembrandt, martyr of light and dark 66
Breaks of the rounded bays, shingle like cartilage, the blue 66
Song comes when the throat is raw and the mind is dry 67
Eyes keener than a sharpened scythe 67
Equipped with the eyesight and absorption of wasps 68
I’m plunged into a lion’s den, a fort 68
If our enemies take me 69
Ribbed pillars and piers, arcades and aisles 70
This is what I want most of all 70
This azure island was exalted by its potters 71
As if language weren’t enough 72
I raise this greenness to my lips 73
With her irregular delightful way of walking 73
Notes 75
Acknowledgements 87
Further Reading: A Select Bibliography 89
