Speaking In Tongues
Guided by Voices

Osip Mandelstam


Translated by Boris Leyvi

 
 

 
 
Insomnia, Homer, Sails – to winds tight jibs release.
The list of boats I quit, half to remain unread…
That elongated brood, the craning train that fled
Sometime ago above the Ancient Greece.
 
 
Alike the wedge of cranes, into the foreign land…
Upon the royal heads the crowns of god-sent foam…
For Helen were it not, where do you head from home,
What would Troy mean alone to you, Achaean men?
 
 
The sea and Homer, all – by love moves and endears.
Whom shall I listen to? Old Homer wouldn’t say…
Apprising, the Black Sea is humming on its way,
With horrid crash at my headrest appears…