Friday, August 7, 2009

You Took Away

Here's a haunting short work by Osip Mandelstam (1891 - 1938), translated by Clarence Brown and W. S. Merwin:

You took away all the oceans and all the room

You took away all the oceans and all the room.
You gave me my shoe-size in earth with bars around it.
Where did it get you? Nowhere.
You left me my lips, and they shape words, even in silence.

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