title: Osip Mandelstam: 50 Poems
author: Osip Mandelshtam
description: Again The Discordances Of War<br /> The Age<br /> Along With All The Others<br /> Among The Priests And Elders, The Young Levite<br /> The Apartment's As Quiet As Paper<br /> Ariosto<br /> At A Terrifying Height, A Wandering Fire<br /> Because I Didn't Dare Hold Off Your Embraces<br /> The Breaches Of Round Bays, The Gravel And The Blue<br /> The Bread Is Poisoned And The Air's Drunk Dry<br /> A Certain Alexander Herzovich<br /> A Cold Spring In Starving Old Crimea<br /> The Day Was Five-headed. For Five Days And Five Nights<br /> The Finder Of A Horseshoe<br /> For The Resounding Valor Of Millenia To Come<br /> From Ottave<br /> Hagia Sophia<br /> Heaviness And Tenderness, You're Sisters With The Same Device<br /> I Drink To Military Asters, To All That I'm Censured About<br /> I Washed In The Courtyard At Night<br /> I'll Say It In Draft In A Whisper<br /> I'll Tell You Bluntly<br /> The Idle Life Has Sent Us Insane<br /> In A Sledge Packed Deep In Straw We Lurched<br /> In Petersburg We'll Meet Again<br /> In The Polyphony Of Young Girls' Choirs<br /> Insomnia. Homer. Tautly Swelling Sails<br /> Leningrad<br /> Like Summer Lightning A Life Fell Away<br /> My Eyelashes Sting And A Tear Has Welled Up In My Heart<br /> The Ode On Slate<br /> On Police Station Watermarked Paper<br /> Salome<br /> Still Far From Patriarch Ar Sage<br /> Stooping Involuntarily To The Empty Ground<br /> Take, For Joy's Sake, From These Hands Of Mine<br /> There Are Orioles In The Forests And The Only Real Measure<br /> This Night Is Beyond Repair<br /> To The German Language<br /> Tristia<br /> The Twilight Of Freedom<br /> Verses On The Unknown Soldier<br /> Wave To Wave The Comber Runs, Breaking The Backs Of Waves<br /> We Live Without Feeling Beneath Us Firm Ground<br /> What Is The Name Of This Street?<br /> When Moscow's Feverish Forum Dies<br /> Where Is That Bound And Fettered Groan?<br /> Where Night Casts Anchor<br /> Winter For Some Is Arak Spirit And Blue-eyed Punch<br /> With Them And Not With You Or Me<br /> Toward Biography (9)<br /> -- <i>Table of Poems from <a href="/exec/obidos/subst/partners/marketing/poemfinder.html/${0}">Poem Finder</a></i>
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  ![Cover](images/cover.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Selected Poems
  
  
    
  
  
  ### Osip Mandelshtam
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  James Greene’s acclaimed translations of the poetry of Osip Mandelshtam, now
  in an extensively revised and augmented edition.
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Osip Mandelshtam
  
  
  ## SELECTED POEMS
  
  
  ##
  
  
  Selected and Translated
  
  
  
  
  
  ##
  
  
  by James Greene
  
  
  
  
  
  ##
  
  
  Forewords by Nadezhda Mandelshtam
  
  
  
  
  
  ##
  
  
  and Donald Davie
  
  
  
  
  
  ##
  
  
  Introduction by Donald Rayfield
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _To Ron Holmes, Maxwell Shorter and Antony Wood_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Fine fingers quiver;
  
  
  A fragile body breathes:
  
  
  A boat sliding across
  
  
  Fathomless silent seas.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _1909_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Few live for the sake of eternity.
  
  
  But if the passing moment makes you anxious
  
  
  Your lot is terror and your house precarious!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _1912_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  And alone, infinity, I read
  
  
  Your primer:
  
  
  Your wild leafless herbal –
  
  
  Logarithm-table of prodigious roots.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _1933_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  