Eleven Poems of Osip Mandelstam (Selected Poems of the Russian Symbolists: Bryusov, Akhmatova and Mandelstam)

In every breath we drink fatal air,

And every hour is a deadly time for us.

In Petropolis

Then the more often it occurs to me: out of unkind weightiness

I should create some day something beautiful.

A body has been given to me

A body has been given to me, what should I do with it,

So unique and so mine?

For quiet joy to breathe and live

Whom, tell me, should I thank?

I am a gardener and also a flower,

In the world’s dungeon I am not alone.

On the glass of eternity they have already settled,

My breath and my warmth.

A body has been given to me

A body has been given to me, what should I do with it,

So unique and so mine?

For quiet joy to breathe and live

Whom, tell me, should I thank?

I am a gardener and also a flower,

In the world’s dungeon I am not alone.

On the glass of eternity they have already settled,

My breath and my warmth.

A design will imprint itself on it,

Lately unrecognisable.

Let the murk of the moment expire –

That precious design cannot be crossed out.

A body has been given to me, what should I do with it,

So unique and so mine?

For quiet joy to breathe and live

Whom, tell me, should I thank?

I am a gardener and also a flower,

In the world’s dungeon I am not alone.