Where Can I Hide In This January? by Osip Mandelstam

Where can I hide in this January?

Wide-open city with a mad death-grip…

Can I be drunk from sealed doors? –

I want to bellow from locks and knots…

 

And the socks of barking back roads,

and the hovels on twisted streets –

and deadbeats hurry into corners

and hurriedly dart back out again…

 

And into the pit, into the warty dark

I slide, into waterworks of ice,

and I stumble, I eat dead air,

and fevered crows exploding everywhere –

 

But I cry after them, shouting at

some wickerwork of frozen wood:

A reader! A councillor! A doctor!

A conversation on the spiny stair!

 

by Осип Эмильевич Мандельштам (Osip Emilyevich Mandelshtam. His surname is commonly latinised as Mandelstam)

(1937)

translated by Andrew Davis