When on the squares and in solitary silence <br />We slowly go out of our minds, <br />Brutal winter will offer us <br />Cold and clear Rhine wine. <br /> <br />The frost offers us in a silver pail <br />The white wine of Valhalla, <br />And for us it recalls <br />A clear image of a northern man. <br /> <br />But northern skalds are rude, <br />Don't know the joy of the game, <br />And to northern troops are dear <br />Amber, feasts and flames. <br /> <br />They only dream of the southern air, <br />The magic of a foreign sky. <br />-- Nevertheless the stubborn friend <br />Still refuses to try.<br /><br />Osip Emilevich Mandelstam<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/when-on-the-squares-and-in-solitary-silence/
