I have studied the Science of departures, <br />in night’s sorrows, when a woman’s hair falls down. <br />The oxen chew, there’s the waiting, pure, <br />in the last hours of vigil in the town, <br />and I reverence night’s ritual cock-crowing, <br />when reddened eyes lift sorrow’s load and choose <br />to stare at distance, and a woman’s crying <br />is mingled with the singing of the Muse. <br /> <br />Who knows, when the word ‘departure’ is spoken <br />what kind of separation is at hand, <br />or of what that cock-crow is a token, <br />when a fire on the Acropolis lights the ground, <br />and why at the dawning of a new life, <br />when the ox chews lazily in its stall, <br />the cock, the herald of the new life, <br />flaps his wings on the city wall? <br /> <br />I like the monotony of spinning, <br />the shuttle moves to and fro, <br />the spindle hums. Look, barefoot Delia’s running <br />to meet you, like swansdown on the road! <br />How threadbare the language of joy’s game, <br />how meagre the foundation of our life! <br />Everything was, and is repeated again: <br />it’s the flash of recognition brings delight. <br /> <br />So be it: on a dish of clean earthenware, <br />like a flattened squirrel’s pelt, a shape, <br />forms a small, transparent figure, where <br />a girl’s face bends to gaze at the wax’s fate. <br />Not for us to prophesy, Erebus, Brother of Night: <br />Wax is for women: Bronze is for men. <br />Our fate is only given in fight, <br />to die by divination is given to them.<br /><br />Osip Mandelstam<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/tristia/
