Two poems

Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938)

Somebody’s wife – I don’t know whose – is seeking

her husband through the streets of monster-Kiev 

and will not let a single teardrop fall 

to stain her waxen cheek.

No gypsy-girls are telling beauties’ fortunes 

and in the Park there are no fiddles sounding;  

on the Khreshchátyk stricken horses fall 

and the posh suburbs stink of death.

Red Army soldiers squeeze onto the benches 

of the last tram to make a getaway, 

and from its door a blood-stained greatcoat yells:

  ‘Don’t worry – we’ll be back!’

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Piles of human heads stretch into the distance;  

I shrink with them, become invisible; 

in favourite books, though, and in children’s games 

I rise – I stand and shout: ‘Look! Look, the sunshine!’

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John says: ‘These prophetic poems were written around 1937, when Mandelstam was enduring internal exile in the town of Voronezh; he died in the Gulag in the following year. Khreshchátyk is the main street in central Kyiv, the scene of the “Orange Revolution” of 2004, which overturned a rigged election. “Kiev” is the Russian name of the city, as used by the poet.’

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