In the cold season, in a locality accustomed to heat more than to cold, to horizontality more than to a mountain, a child was born in a cave in order to save the world; it blew as only in deserts in winter it blows, athwart.
To Him, all things seemed enormous: His mother’s breast, the steam out of the ox’s nostrils, Caspar, Balthazar, Melchior – the team of Magi, their presents heaped by the door, ajar. He was but a dot, and a dot was the star.
Keenly, without blinking, through pallid, stray clouds, upon the child in the manger, from far away – from the depth of the universe, from its opposite end – the star was looking into the cave. And that was the Father’s stare.
By Иосиф Александрович Бродский (Joseph Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky a.k.a. Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky) (December 1987) translated by the author, Brodsky, himself
Brodsky reciting his poem
Рождественская звезда
В холодную пору, в местности, привычной скорей к жаре, чем к холоду, к плоской поверхности более, чем к горе, младенец родился в пещере, чтоб мир спасти: мело, как только в пустыне может зимой мести.
Ему все казалось огромным: грудь матери, желтый пар из воловьих ноздрей, волхвы — Балтазар, Гаспар, Мельхиор; их подарки, втащенные сюда. Он был всего лишь точкой. И точкой была звезда.
Внимательно, не мигая, сквозь редкие облака, на лежащего в яслях ребенка издалека, из глубины Вселенной, с другого ее конца, звезда смотрела в пещеру. И это был взгляд Отца.
The reserve of weak, sensitive eyelashes protects your pupil in its heavenly rind, as it looks into the distance and down.
Let it be blessed and live long in its homeland – cast the surprise pool of your eye to catch me!
Already it looks willingly at the ephemeral ages – bright, rainbowed, fleshless, still pleading.
by Осип Эмильевич Мандельштам (Osip Emilyevich Mandelshtam) (His surname is commonly Latinised as Mandelstam) (2 January 1937) from the second Voronezh Notebook translated by Richard and Elizabeth McKane
‘Твой зрачок в небесной корке’
Твой зрачок в небесной корке, Обращенный вдаль и ниц, Защищают оговорки Слабых, чующих ресниц.
Будет он обожествленный Долго жить в родной стране — Омут ока удивленный,— Кинь его вдогонку мне.
Он глядит уже охотно В мимолетные века — Светлый, радужный, бесплотный, Умоляющий пока.
Additional information: The translators chose to use the first line of the second stanza as a title for the unnamed piece rather than the first line of the first stanza as most would do with untitled poems for reference purposes. Hence the discrepancy in the title of this post between the Russian and English. Aside from this they numbered this poem as the seventeenth entry in the second of Mandelstam’s Voronezh Notebooks but I don’t know if that is a officially recognised convention when referring to the unnamed pieces in the three notebooks (as you might use regarding, for example, Shakespeare’s sonnets).
The notebooks were written while he was in exile, accompanied by his wife Nadezhda in the southwestern Russian city of Voronezh, which was a reprieve of sorts after he had been arrested during the repression of the 1930s. Mandelstam and his wife chose Voronezh, possibly, partly, because the name appealed to him. In April 1935, he wrote a four line poem that included the pun – Voronezh – blazh‘, Voronezh – voron, nozh meaning ‘Voronezh is a whim, Voronezh – a raven, a knife.’
The apartment building he resided in during his exile, located on Friedrich Engels Street next to the Orlyonok Park, was recently given special status.
Don’t leave the room, don’t blunder, do not go on. If you’re smoking Shipka, what good is the Sun? Outside, all is meaningless, especially – the cry of joy. To the lavatory and back straightaway, old boy.
O, don’t leave the room, don’t call for a cab, my friend. Because Space is a corridor that will end with a meter. And, if your dear, delight expressing, walks inside, kick her out without undressing.
Don’t leave the room; pretend that you have a cold. Four walls and a chair entice like nothing else in the world. Why leave the place that you’ll surely return to late in the night, as you were, only more – mutilated?
O, don’t leave the room. Enchanted, dance bossa nova in shoes worn on bare feet, in a coat draped over your naked body. The hall reeks of ski wax and cabbage. You’ve written a lot; more would be extra baggage.
Don’t leave the room. Let only the room imagine a little what you might look like. And besides, incognito ergo sum, as form itself learned from substance once. Don’t leave the room! Outside, you will not find France.
Don’t be a fool! Be what others weren’t. Remain. Don’t leave the room! Let the furniture have free reign, blend in with wallpaper. Bolt the door, barricade in place with a dresser from chronos, cosmos, eros, virus, race.
translated by ??? (I’ve lost track of who did this translation so any aid in attributing the appropriate credit would be greatly appreciated)
Brodsky reciting his poem in Russian
Beneath is the original Russian version of the poem in Cyrillic.
Не выходи из комнаты
Не выходи из комнаты, не совершай ошибку. Зачем тебе Солнце, если ты куришь Шипку? За дверью бессмысленно все, особенно — возглас счастья. Только в уборную — и сразу же возвращайся.
О, не выходи из комнаты, не вызывай мотора. Потому что пространство сделано из коридора и кончается счетчиком. А если войдет живая милка, пасть разевая, выгони не раздевая.
Не выходи из комнаты; считай, что тебя продуло. Что интересней на свете стены и стула? Зачем выходить оттуда, куда вернешься вечером таким же, каким ты был, тем более — изувеченным?
О, не выходи из комнаты. Танцуй, поймав, боссанову в пальто на голое тело, в туфлях на босу ногу. В прихожей пахнет капустой и мазью лыжной. Ты написал много букв; еще одна будет лишней.
Не выходи из комнаты. О, пускай только комната догадывается, как ты выглядишь. И вообще инкогнито эрго сум, как заметила форме в сердцах субстанция. Не выходи из комнаты! На улице, чай, не Франция.
Не будь дураком! Будь тем, чем другие не были. Не выходи из комнаты! То есть дай волю мебели, слейся лицом с обоями. Запрись и забаррикадируйся шкафом от хроноса, космоса, эроса, расы, вируса.
Another recital of the poem by the Russian actor and activist Алексей Девотченко (Alexei Devotchenko)
In particular this translation note, from the article, where she discusses the choices faced in expressing wordplay successfully to an audience unlikely to be familiar with the original cultural context:
…the original second line says ‘Why should you need the sun (solntse) if you smoke Shipka?’ Both Solntse and Shipka were brands of Bulgarian cigarettes. I decided against attempts along the lines of ‘You read The Guardian, why should you need the sun?’, Brodsky being a Russian chain smoker rather than a British liberal.
Interesting addition: Throughout much of 1926 Tsvetaeva kept up and intense correspondence with Rainer Maria Rilke and Boris Pasternak. The above poem was sent to Pasternak while Tsvetaeva was in exile and had moved from Prague to Paris thus increasing her distance from her homeland. She grew increasingly isolated amongst the other emigre community as she had praised the works of Mayakovsky which got her mistakenly branded as endorsing the Soviet system which eventually led the editors of the important journal The Latest News to stop publishing her works which, via her literary earnings, had allowed her to support her family through her contributions.
Horseshoe-heavy, he hurls his decrees low and high:
In the groin, in the forehead, the eyebrow, the eye.
Executions are what he likes best.
Broad is the highlander’s chest.
by Осип Эмильевич Мандельштам (Osip Emilyevich Mandelshtam. His surname is commonly latinised as Mandelstam)
(Autumn, 1933)
translated by Alexandra Berlina
Interesting additon: In the Autumn of 1933 Mandelstam composed an epigram about Stalin, which he performed at seven small gatherings in Moscow, which ends with the above lines. Mandelstam was arrested six months later but instead of being executed (by being shot) he was exiled to the Northern Urals. Why was this considering ‘executions’ are what [Stalin] loves best’? A cruel irony or possibly that this relative leniency was due to Stalin taking a personal interest in Mandelstam’s case and being concerned about his own place in Russian literary history? After Mandelstam’s attempted suicide the usual sentence was commuted to one of being banished from the largest cities in Russia. Mandelstam and his wife, Nadezhda, settled in Voronezh where he went on to write the three Voronezh Notebooks. In May 1938 he was arrested again and sentenced to five years in the Gulag. He died in a transit camp near Vladivostok on 27 December 1938.
Rambling At The Bridge Head 
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