1 Upon Pieria's great stone cascades The muses were conducting their first choir And just like bees, the blind musicians made Gifts of Ionian honey from their lyres. From a young woman's convex forehead Cold air blew in gusts like rays of sun That the archipelago's tender coffins Would open for the far-off great-grand-son. 2 The springtime stomps across the meadows of Hellas, The rainbow-booted Sappho runs along Cicadas ring as if with tiny hammers And interweave like tendrils with sweet song. The carpenter has built a giant tower, For wedding day they suffocated hens And to create the shoes the clumsy cobbler Has stretched and tattered all the five ox skins. 3 Unhurried and unkempt is turtoise-lyre Like something legless barely crawling past She lies under the sunshine of Epirus, Her golden stomach warming not-too-fast. Well, who in such a shape will care for her, Who'll turn her over while she sleeps at night? In dreams she is awaiting for Terpander Sensing at dawn the drying fingers' flight. 4 Cold dew is feeding oaks with gentle ease The unkempt grass with erudition speaks her view, Honeycomb falls to the delight of bees - Oh, holy isles, exactly where are you, Where broken bread is never eaten, Where there is only honey, wine and milk, Where fiddle's labor does not reach the heaven, And languorously turns the fortune's wheel. By Osip Mandelshtam Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat
