Trojan Poetry 59: Osip Mandelstam, translated by Christian Wiman

Christian Wiman reading "And I Was Alive": https://onbeing.org/blog/and-i-was-alive/

Christian Wiman on translating Mandelstam: http://www.fsgpoetry.com/fsg/2011/04/christian-wiman-on-translating-osip-mandelstam.html

Mounds of Human Heads
by Osip Mandelstam (translated by Christian Wiman)

Mounds of human heads and mine
Among them, unseen, unmarked, unmourned.

But look: in lines as cherished as a lover’s scars,
In screams of children who play at wars,

I rise with my hands of wind, my tongue of sun.


And I Was Alive
by Osip Mandelstam (translated by Christian Wiman)

And I was alive in the blizzard of the blossoming pear,
Myself I stood in the storm of the bird–cherry tree.
It was all leaflife and starshower, unerring, self–shattering
power,
And it was all aimed at me.

What is this dire delight flowering fleeing always earth?
What is being? What is truth?

Blossoms rupture and rapture the air,
All hover and hammer,
Time intensified and time intolerable, sweetness raveling rot.
It is now. It is not.