From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   1   
      
   A word of peace, rejected, stands   
   At start of an insulted era;   
   There's light inside a darkened cavern   
   And ether of the foreign lands;   
   Ether, of which we just could not,   
   Of which to breathe we did not want;   
   With voice of goats, deep and gaunt,   
   Soloists are singing, hairy lot.   
      
   2   
      
   While goatlings and steer both   
   On foggy pastures were delaying   
   And friendly eagles were relaying   
   From shoulders of the sleepy rocks   
   Germans fed eagles on the rock   
   A lion an Englishman revered   
   And Gallic comb at once appeared   
   From out the mantle of a cock.   
      
   3   
      
   And now behold, the wild sage   
   Has grasped the steeple of Heracles,   
   And then the soil was shorn of sparkles,   
   Black and ungrateful like old age.   
   I'll take a dry stick in my palms   
   And wring from it a spark of fire,   
   Let into stream of night expire   
   The beasts aroused by my charms.   
      
   4   
      
   The cock, the lion, the brown   
   Eagle and the tender bear --   
   We'll build a cage before the war   
   And warm with fire the animal skin.   
   And wine of time I also sing   
   The source of the Italian fable   
   As in the pre-aryan cradle   
   Tongues Slavic and Germanic ring.   
      
   5   
      
   You aren't too lazy, Italy,   
   To shake the chariots of Rome,   
   With gargling of domestic fowl   
   Having flown from menagerie?   
   And you, the hen, do not play rough:   
   The eagle here sits mean and hyped   
   What that for you and all your type   
   A heavy stone is not enough?   
      
   6   
      
   In the menagerie the beasts now reign,   
   We will get calmer for much longer,   
   And in its fullness will gush Volga,   
   As lighter water flows through Rhine.   
   And a wise man from days of yore   
   To foreigner will pay his honor   
   Like demi-god, in whirling fervor,   
   Dancing upon the river shore!   
      
   By Osip Mandelshtam   
   Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)