To Osip Mandelstam--

I bend over them as if over a cup,

Innumerable precious strokes--

This is the black, tender news

Of our bloodstained youth.

The air is like the air I breathed

That night over the abyss,

That night, empty, iron,

When shouts and cries were useless.

Oh, how heady the breath of the carnation

That appeared to me once in my dreams--

There, where Eurydices circle,

The bull carries Europa over the foam;

Here are our shadows rushing by,

Over the Neva, over the Neva, over the Neva,

Here is the Neva splashing against the steps--

Here is your pass to immortality.

Here are the keys to the apartment

About which there is not one word . . .

Here is the voice of the mysterious lyre,

The guest in a meadow beyond this world.