Osip Mandelstam: 394
Toward the empty earth
falling, one step faltering—
some sweetness, in this
unwilling hesitance—
she walks, keeping
just ahead of her friends,
the quick-footed woman,
the younger man, one year younger.
A shy freedom draws her, her hobbled step
frees her, fires her, and it seems
the shining riddle in her walk
wants to hold her back:
the riddle, that this spring weather
is for us the first mother:
the mother of the grave.
And this will keep on beginning forever.
There are women,
the damp earth’s flesh and blood:
every step they take, a cry,
a deep steel drum.
It is their calling
to accompany those who have died;
and to be there, the first
to greet the resurrected.
To ask for their tenderness
would be a trespass against them;
but to go off, away from them--
no one has the strength.
Today is an angel; tomorrow
worms, and the grave;
and the day after
only lines in chalk.
The step you took
no longer there to take.
Flowers are deathless. Heaven is round.
And everything to be is only a promise.
--Voronezh. 4 May 1937
(translated with Anne Frydman)
