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    The Meadow Where Time Stands Still

    Selected Poems

    Part of Pushkin Press Classics

    Author Osip Mandelshtam
    $13.99 US
    Pushkin Press | Pushkin Press Classics
    On sale Aug 04, 2026 | 9781805331681
    Sales rights: US/CAN (No Open Mkt)
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    A poignant collection of Osip Mandelshtam's poetry, full of a piercing nostalgia for a better world and bearing bitter witness to the cruelty of Stalin's Russia.

    “Probably the greatest Russian poet of this century.” – The New York Times

    Osip Mandelshtam, arguably the greatest Russian poet of the 20th century, died in a Stalinist prison camp at the age of 47. It was not his first arrest - he had already been imprisoned multiple times, as well as tortured, exiled, and blacklisted for the criticism of the Soviet state implicit in his verse. And yet many of his poems survived attempted purges - often hidden in the unlikeliest places, and protected at great risk by his friends and admirers.

    This volume collects the best of his work, including poems he was unable to publish in his lifetime. Offering selections from his major collections Stone and Tristia, it also collects many of the poems that his widow and friends hid among their possessions until it was safe to publish. Drawn from across his working life, these works show his development and major themes: the beauty of human creation, the agony of exile and the courage it takes to stand still and quietly speak the truth.

    Dense and sonorous, his poetry magnificently merges the European past at its best with Russian experience at its worst. Full of light and beauty, bitterness and desolation, Mandelshtam's verse is a powerful expression of the struggle to bear injustice and the poignant dream of a better world.
    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
    Fruit breaking loose from tree:
    The cautious muffled sound,
    Incessant singing
    Of deep forest silence all around …
    (1) 1908


    You slipped out in a light shawl
    From the dimly-lit hall;
    The servants slept on,
    We disturbed no one …
    (3) 1908

    To read only children’s books,
    To cherish child-like thoughts, to throw
    Everything grown-up away,
    To rise out of deep sorrow …

    I’m tired to death of life,
    I welcome nothing it can give me,
    But I adore my naked earth:
    There’s no other one to see.

    A simple wooden swing
    And the darkness of the lofty fir
    As I swung in a far-off garden,
    I remember in a hazy fever.
    (4) 1908

    April-blue enamel:
    Now conceivable, though pale,
    At evening inconspicuously
    Birch-trees hammock in the sky.

    Fine netting cuts
    Thin patterns exactly:
    Designs on porcelain plates
    Traced accurately

    By a considerate artist
    On his firmament of glass –
    Knowing a short-lived strength,
    Oblivious of sad death.
    (6) 1909

    What shall I do with the body I’ve been given,
    So much at one with me, so much my own?

    For the calm happiness of breathing, being able
    To be alive, tell me to whom I should be grateful?

    I’m gardener, flower too, and not alone
    In the world’s dungeon.

    My warmth, my exhalation you can already see
    On the window-pane of eternity.

    A pattern is printed on it,
    Unrecognisable until this minute.

    Condensation may vanish without trace,
    But the cherished pattern no one can efface.
    (8) 1909
    An inexpressible sadness
    Opened two big eyes,
    A vase of flowers woke up
    And splashed its crystal.

    The whole room was filled
    With languor – that sweet medicine!
    Such a small kingdom
    To swallow so much sleep.

    A little red wine,
    A little sunlight in May –
    And fine white fingers
    Breaking a thin biscuit.
    (9) 1909
    Copyright © 2026 by Osip Mandelstam. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

    About

    A poignant collection of Osip Mandelshtam's poetry, full of a piercing nostalgia for a better world and bearing bitter witness to the cruelty of Stalin's Russia.

    “Probably the greatest Russian poet of this century.” – The New York Times

    Osip Mandelshtam, arguably the greatest Russian poet of the 20th century, died in a Stalinist prison camp at the age of 47. It was not his first arrest - he had already been imprisoned multiple times, as well as tortured, exiled, and blacklisted for the criticism of the Soviet state implicit in his verse. And yet many of his poems survived attempted purges - often hidden in the unlikeliest places, and protected at great risk by his friends and admirers.

    This volume collects the best of his work, including poems he was unable to publish in his lifetime. Offering selections from his major collections Stone and Tristia, it also collects many of the poems that his widow and friends hid among their possessions until it was safe to publish. Drawn from across his working life, these works show his development and major themes: the beauty of human creation, the agony of exile and the courage it takes to stand still and quietly speak the truth.

    Dense and sonorous, his poetry magnificently merges the European past at its best with Russian experience at its worst. Full of light and beauty, bitterness and desolation, Mandelshtam's verse is a powerful expression of the struggle to bear injustice and the poignant dream of a better world.

    Table of Contents

    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

    Excerpt

    Fruit breaking loose from tree:
    The cautious muffled sound,
    Incessant singing
    Of deep forest silence all around …
    (1) 1908


    You slipped out in a light shawl
    From the dimly-lit hall;
    The servants slept on,
    We disturbed no one …
    (3) 1908

    To read only children’s books,
    To cherish child-like thoughts, to throw
    Everything grown-up away,
    To rise out of deep sorrow …

    I’m tired to death of life,
    I welcome nothing it can give me,
    But I adore my naked earth:
    There’s no other one to see.

    A simple wooden swing
    And the darkness of the lofty fir
    As I swung in a far-off garden,
    I remember in a hazy fever.
    (4) 1908

    April-blue enamel:
    Now conceivable, though pale,
    At evening inconspicuously
    Birch-trees hammock in the sky.

    Fine netting cuts
    Thin patterns exactly:
    Designs on porcelain plates
    Traced accurately

    By a considerate artist
    On his firmament of glass –
    Knowing a short-lived strength,
    Oblivious of sad death.
    (6) 1909

    What shall I do with the body I’ve been given,
    So much at one with me, so much my own?

    For the calm happiness of breathing, being able
    To be alive, tell me to whom I should be grateful?

    I’m gardener, flower too, and not alone
    In the world’s dungeon.

    My warmth, my exhalation you can already see
    On the window-pane of eternity.

    A pattern is printed on it,
    Unrecognisable until this minute.

    Condensation may vanish without trace,
    But the cherished pattern no one can efface.
    (8) 1909
    An inexpressible sadness
    Opened two big eyes,
    A vase of flowers woke up
    And splashed its crystal.

    The whole room was filled
    With languor – that sweet medicine!
    Such a small kingdom
    To swallow so much sleep.

    A little red wine,
    A little sunlight in May –
    And fine white fingers
    Breaking a thin biscuit.
    (9) 1909
    Copyright © 2026 by Osip Mandelstam. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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