‘You’re not alone. You haven’t died’ by Osip Mandelstam

You're not alone. You haven't died,
while you still,beggar-woman at your side,
take pleasure in the grandeur of the plain,
the gloom, the cold,the whirlwinds of snow.


In sumptuous penury, in mighty poverty
live comforted and at rest -
your days and nights are blest,
your sweet-voiced labour without sin.


Unhappy he, a shadow of himself,
whom a bark astounds and the wind mows down,
and to be pitied he, more dead than alive,
who begs handouts from a ghost.


by Осип Эмильевич Мандельштам (Osip Emilyevich Mandelshtam.)
His surname is commonly latinised as Mandelstam)
(1937)
translated by Andrew Davis

The Last Night by Clark Ashton Smith

I dreamed a dream: I stood upon a height,

A mountain’s utmost eminence of snow.

Beholding ashen plains outflung below

To a far sea-horizon, dim and white.

Beneath the spectral sun’s expiring light

The world lay shrouded in a deathly glow;

Its last fear-laden voice, a wind, came low;

The distant sea lay hushed, as with affright.

 

I watched, until the pale and flickering sun,

In agony and fierce despair, flamed high,

And shadow-slain, went out upon the gloom.

Then Night, that war of gulf-born Titans won,

Impended for a breath on wings of doom.

And through the air fell like a falling sky.

 

by Clark Ashton Smith