Osip Mandelstam


                   I'll whisper it - in an outline.
                   Its hour has not yet come.
                   The chessgame of measureless heaven
                   is mated with sweat - and wisdom.

                   And under purgatory's transient sky
                   we grow absent-minded - forget
                   that lucky heaven-vault on high...
                   is a limber, everlasting habitat.


                         (Voronezh, late 1930s--translated by Henry Gould)

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