Translated from Russian

Insomnia. Homer. Wind-taut sails.
I read the list of ships halfway –
that long brood, that train of cranes
that once rose over Hellas.

Like a wedge of cranes to foreign shores –
divine foam crowns the heads of kings –
Where are you sailing? Without Helen,
what is Troy to you, Achaean men?

And Homer and the sea – all moved by love.
Who will hear me? Homer doesn’t speak…
The Black Sea roars its rousing speech,
and waves crash on my pillow.

1915

The stream of golden honey flowed
so viscous and slow that our hostess could mutter:
“Here in miserable Tauris, where cruel fate has flung us,
We’re not bored at all,” and glanced over her shoulder.

Here the labors of Bacchus, as if in the world
Were just watchmen and dogs; you can walk and see no one.
Like heavy wine barrels, the calm days roll on.
Voices off in the shed – you won’t catch them or answer.

After tea we went out to the brown garden –
like eyelashes, shades were drawn over the windows.
We walked past white columns to look at the vineyard,
Where glassy air spilled over somnolent mountains.

I said: Vines, like a war from antiquity, thrive
Where curly-haired cavalry clash in chaotic formations.
In mountainous Tauris the science of Hellas; lives on
in these noble, rust-colored beds and gold acres.

In the white room silence stands like a spindle,
Smells of vinegar, paint and fresh wine from the cellar.
Remember the Greek house, the wife loved by all –
Not Helen, the other – how long she embroidered?

Golden fleece, where are you now, Golden fleece?
All the way heavy ocean waves roared,
And leaving his ship, having worn out his sail on the seas,
Overflowing with space and time, Odysseus came home.

1917

Osip Emilievich Mandelstam (1891-1938) is a Russian Silver Age poet who, along with Anna Akhmatova, founded the school of Achmeism. Achmeist poetry rejected the dominant styles of symbolism and the supernatural of their day and focused on real-world imagery and experience creating a style that was profound yet deeply personal. As you will see in the poems included here, A Polish Jew, Mandelstam was unable to study in Russia’s most prestigious universities, and he converted to Methodism to attend the University of St. Petersburg. In 1910, he began writing poetry and published his first poetry collection, Stone, in 1913. A victim of Stalin’s purges, he died in a transit camp near Vladivostok.

The poems included here come from his second volume of poetry, Tristia (1922).

Sarah Valentine is a writer and translator. She holds a PhD in Russian literature from Princeton University and has translated Into the Snow: Selected Poems of Gennady Aygi. Valentine has taught literature and creative writing at Princeton University; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, Riverside; and Northwestern University.