Text 07

Oсип Мандельштам

* * *

Бессонница. Гомер. Тугие паруса.

Я список кораблей прочел до середины:

Сей длинный выводок, сей поезд журавлиный,

Что над Элладою когда-то поднялся.

Как журавлиный клин в чужие рубежи, –

На головах царей божественная пена, –

Куда плывете вы? Когда бы не Елена,

Что Троя вам одна, ахейские мужи?

И море, и Гомер - всё движется любовью.

Кого же слушать мне? И вот Гомер молчит,

И море черное, витийствуя, шумит

И с тяжким грохотом подходит к изголовью.

* * *

Insomnia. White sails stretched taut in wind. The list

Of ships goes on and on. Insomnia and Homer:

A frothy brood of cranes, a feathered train that over

Old Hellas rose in times long past and veiled by mist.

By godly foam, by foam divine crowned are the kings,

The flight of cranes a wedge forced into alien borders.

What's Troy to you, O Greeks, without fair Helen? Hold

you Course for what distant shores on snowy canvas wings?

The sea, the sea and Homer – all is moved by passion.

Whom shall I listen to?.. The poet silent keeps.

As for the sea - not so: it rants, it rants and weeps,

And, dark of wave, sweeps close, against my headboard dashing.

(Translated by Irina Zheleznova)

* * *

Insomnia. Homer. Taut canvas.

Half the catalogue of ships is mine:

that flight of cranes, long stretched-out line,

that once rose, out of Hellas.

To an alien land, like a phalanx of cranes –

Foam of the gods on the heads of kings –

Where do you sail? What would the things

of Troy, be to you, Achaeans, without Helen?

The sea, or Homer – all moves by love’s glow.

Which should I hear? Now Homer is silent,

and the Black Sea thundering its oratory, turbulent,

and, surging, roars against my pillow.

(Translated by A.S. Kline, 2000)