Menagerie

1

A word of peace, rejected, stands 
At start of an insulted era; 
There's light inside a darkened cavern 
And ether of the foreign lands; 
Ether, of which we just could not, 
Of which to breathe we did not want; 
With voice of goats, deep and gaunt, 
Soloists are singing, hairy lot. 

2 

While goatlings and steer both 
On foggy pastures were delaying 
And friendly eagles were relaying 
From shoulders of the sleepy rocks 
Germans fed eagles on the rock 
A lion an Englishman revered 
And Gallic comb at once appeared 
From out the mantle of a cock. 

3

And now behold, the wild sage 
Has grasped the steeple of Heracles, 
And then the soil was shorn of sparkles, 
Black and ungrateful like old age. 
I'll take a dry stick in my palms 
And wring from it a spark of fire, 
Let into stream of night expire 
The beasts aroused by my charms. 

4 

The cock, the lion, the brown 
Eagle and the tender bear -- 
We'll build a cage before the war 
And warm with fire the animal skin. 
And wine of time I also sing 
The source of the Italian fable 
As in the pre-aryan cradle 
Tongues Slavic and Germanic ring. 

5 

You aren't too lazy, Italy, 
To shake the chariots of Rome, 
With gargling of domestic fowl 
Having flown from menagerie? 
And you, the hen, do not play rough: 
The eagle here sits mean and hyped 
What that for you and all your type 
A heavy stone is not enough? 

6 

In the menagerie the beasts now reign, 
We will get calmer for much longer, 
And in its fullness will gush Volga, 
As lighter water flows through Rhine. 
And a wise man from days of yore 
To foreigner will pay his honor 
Like demi-god, in whirling fervor, 
Dancing upon the river shore!

By Osip Mandelshtam
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat