Osip Mandelstam
from The Voronezh Notebooks

Kama

I.
How the eye goes dark on the Kama River,
When the towns go down on oaken knees.

Scorching spruce rushes, done up in spiders’ web,
Beard to beard, going young in the water the trees.

Waters shouldered against a hundred & four oars—
Up and down to Kazan and Cherdin they’re bore.

And so I sailed there on the river, the window curtained off,
My head in flames, the window curtained off.

My wife with me—five nights she’s without sleep,
Guarding three guards, five nights she’s without sleep.

II. (Mandelstam’s own censored version)

How the eye goes dark on the Kama River,
When the towns go down on oaken knees.

Scorching spruce rushes, done up in spiders’ web,
Beard to beard, going young in the water the trees.

Waters shouldered against a hundred & four oars—
Up and down to Kazan and Cherdin they’re bore.

Charred by new forest, the great crowd unwashed,
A scattering of the water-logged, machine-gunned flock.

They’re howling on the Tobol River. The Ob choked
With timber, and the river mile lifted high above the trees.

III.
Fading, I looked at the coniferous East in pine,
The full-watered Kama rushing the buoy line.

And I’d have liked to take the mountain, pare a layer
With a bonfire—and scarcely able to salt the woods in time.

And I’d have liked to make a home there, you see—
In these perennial Urals, made up of real people.

And I’d have liked to guard & protect this insane
Mirror-like surface, dressed in a long-tailed great coat.

—April to May, 1935

 

Stanzas

I don’t want the soul’s last dime spent down
Around these hothouse youths,
But like a lone farmer off to the collective,
I’ll head into the world—the people just beautiful.

 

I adore the pleats in a Red Army coat—
Down to the ankles, sleeves simple and slick,
And the cut akin to these Volga storms,
Jutting out from the chest & shoulder blade, such form,
A perfect hang, not an extra inch of stitch,
Rolled and slung over the shoulder for summer time.

 

This damn seam of mine, this awkward game
Split us in two, but now—here’s the thing:
I’ve got to live, breathing & bolsheviking,
Grow pretty before dying—
Hang out awhile, horse around with the people!

 

Just imagine in our gentle Cherdyn,
The Ob river smell, the Tobol river belling,
And how I tossed & thrashed in a seven-inch mayhem!
I didn’t see the fight between those stool pigeons:
Like a rooster in a gauzy summer darkness –
All the grub and hocking and something and the lies –
I got that rat off my back. One leap. And I’m back on track.

 

But you, my sister Moscow, you’re so light –
When you meet your brother on the plane
Just prior to the first ringing of the tram:
Gentler than the sea you are and mixed up as a salad
Of wood, of glass, of milk…

 

My country gave me a talking to,
Indulged, chided, didn’t read me,
But once I was a man, it noticed
I could witness and suddenly, like a lens,
Ignited me with a ray from the Steeple of Admiralty.

 

I’ve got to live, breathing & bolsheviking,
Work the tongue, unruly—on my own, —
I hear the Soviet machines pounding in the Arctic.
I remember it all: the necks of those German brothers,
And how the gardener and butcher took his leisure,
Admiring Lorelei’s scarlet comb.

 

And I’m not robbed, not utterly broken,
Nothing really just struck simply transgigantisized…
Like in The Lay of Igor’s Campaign, my strings all taut,
And after all the asphyxiation in my voice
The earth resounds—the final gun—
All the dry damp acres of black earth!

—May to June, 1935