from The Voronezh Notebooks
Word count: 104
Paragraphs: 5
Plunged into the lions’ den and fortress,
Immersing deeper, further, lower,
Below these sounds, their leavened downpour—
More potent than the lion, than the Books of Moses.
Closer, closer, your call is nearing, close—
Before the birth of the commandments,
Before beginnings—a strand of Oceania pearls,
Meek baskets of Tahitian women.
You, continent of song that punishes and cleanses,
By valleys of this thick and sturdy voice, approach!
These well-born daughters’s sweet-savage faces,
Aren’t worth your little finger, matriarch.
My time to go has yet to come:
I too accompanied the universe’s rapture,
The same way that the organ’s hum
Accompanies the woman’s song in sotto voce.
February 12, 1937
Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938) is widely regarded as one of Russia’s most important modernist poets. Before his 1934 arrest for privately circulated poems critical of the Soviet regime, he published two poetry collections, a memoir, a collection of essays and prose works, and numerous works of journalism and translation in the Soviet press. During his three-year exile in a southern Russian city, Mandelstam composed the body of work known as The Voronezh Notebooks. Re-arrested a year after his return, Mandelstam died in a transit camp near Vladivostok.
Poet, translator, novelist, and Zen monk, John High (Ninso) has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for Humanities, as well as four Fulbrights. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including Scrolls of a Temple Sweeper (Wet Cement Press). His co-translation of Mandelstam’s The Voronezh Notebooks is forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press. He lives in Lisbon.
Matvei Yankelevich’s translations include Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms. His most recent poetry chapbook is Dead Winter (Fonograf). His co-translation of Mandelstam’s The Voronezh Notebooks is forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press. He is the editor of the nonprofit publisher World Poetry Books and teaches translation at Columbia University and elsewhere.