If I am to know how to restrain your hands, <br />If I am to betray the tender, salty lips, <br />I must wait for daybreak in the dense acropolis. <br />How I hate those ancient weeping timbers . <br /> <br />Achaian men equip their steeds in darkness. <br />With jagged saws they rip firmly into the walls. <br />The dry fuss of blood does not subside at all, <br />And for you there is no name, no sound, no mold. <br /> <br />How could I imagine you'd return! How bold! <br />Why did I lose touch with you so prematurely! <br />The gloom has still not dispersed, <br />The cock has not finished his song, <br />The glowing ax has still not entered the pulp. <br /> <br />The resin came forth on the walls like a transparent tear, <br />And the city feels its wooden ribs, <br />But the blood rushed out to the stairs, an attack, <br />And thrice the men dreamed of the seductive figure. <br /> <br />Where is pleasant Troy, where is the king's, the maiden's home? <br />Priam's great starling coop will be destroyed, <br />And the arrows will fall as a dry forest rain, <br />And more will spring up like a hazel grove. <br /> <br />The last star's sting will be extinguished painlessly, <br />And morning will knock on the window like a grey swallow, <br />And slow day will begin to stir, like an ox in the haystack <br />Just awakened from a long dream.<br /><br />Osip Emilevich Mandelstam<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/if-i-am-to-know-how-to-restrain-your-hands/
