My beast, my age, who will try <br />to look you in the eye, <br />and weld the vertebrae <br />of century to century, <br />with blood? Creating blood <br />pours out of mortal things: <br />only the parasitic shudder, <br />when the new world sings. <br /> <br />As long as it still has life, <br />the creature lifts its bone, <br />and, along the secret line <br />of the spine, waves foam. <br />Once more life’s crown, <br />like a lamb, is sacrificed, <br />cartilage under the knife - <br />the age of the new-born. <br /> <br />To free life from jail, <br />and begin a new absolute, <br />the mass of knotted days <br />must be linked by means of a flute. <br />With human anguish <br />the age rocks the wave’s mass, <br />and the golden measure’s hissed <br />by a viper in the grass. <br /> <br />And new buds will swell, intact, <br />the green shoots engage, <br />but your spine is cracked <br />my beautiful, pitiful, age. <br />And grimacing dumbly, you writhe, <br />look back, feebly, with cruel jaws, <br />a creature, once supple and lithe, <br />at the tracks left by your paws.<br /><br />Osip Mandelstam<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-age/
