Tortoise

1

Upon Pieria's great stone cascades 
The muses were conducting their first choir 
And just like bees, the blind musicians made 
Gifts of Ionian honey from their lyres. 
From a young woman's convex forehead  
Cold air blew in gusts like rays of sun 
That the archipelago's tender coffins  
Would open for the far-off great-grand-son. 

2 

The springtime stomps across the meadows of Hellas, 
The rainbow-booted Sappho runs along 
Cicadas ring as if with tiny hammers 
And interweave like tendrils with sweet song. 
The carpenter has built a giant tower, 
For wedding day they suffocated hens 
And to create the shoes the clumsy cobbler  
Has stretched and tattered all the five ox skins. 

3 

Unhurried and unkempt is turtoise-lyre 
Like something legless barely crawling past 
She lies under the sunshine of Epirus, 
Her golden stomach warming not-too-fast. 
Well, who in such a shape will care for her, 
Who'll turn her over while she sleeps at night? 
In dreams she is awaiting for Terpander 
Sensing at dawn the drying fingers' flight. 

4 

Cold dew is feeding oaks with gentle ease 
The unkempt grass with erudition speaks her view, 
Honeycomb falls to the delight of bees - 
Oh, holy isles, exactly where are you, 
Where broken bread is never eaten, 
Where there is only honey, wine and milk, 
Where fiddle's labor does not reach the heaven, 
And languorously turns the fortune's wheel.

By Osip Mandelshtam
Translated from Russian by Ilya Shambat 
https://sites.google.com/site/ibshambat