The Selected Poems Quotes

“My turn shall also come:
I sense the spreading of a wing.”
― Osip Mandelstam, The Selected Poems

“Take from my palms, to soothe your heart,
a little honey, a little sun,
in obedience to Persephone's bees.

You can't untie a boat that was never moored,
nor hear a shadow in its furs,
nor move through thick life without fear.

For us, all that's left is kisses
tattered as the little bees
that die when they leave the hive.

Deep in the transparent night they're still humming,
at home in the dark wood on the mountain,
in the mint and lungwort and the past.

But lay to your heart my rough gift,
this unlovely dry necklace of dead bees
that once made a sun out of honey.

― Osip Mandelstam, The Selected Poems (NYRB Classics; 1st edition, August 31, 2004) Originally published 1972”
― Osip Mandelstam, The Selected Poems

“Where to start?
Everything cracks and shakes,
The air trembles with similes,
No one world's better than another;
the earth moans with metaphors.”
― Osip Mandelstam, Selected Poems

“I envy everyone secretly,
I secretly love everything.”
― Osip Mandelstam, The Selected Poems

“I carry Sorrow, a grey
bird, sluggish, in my chest.”
― Osip Mandelstam, The Selected Poems

“If the halls of the Hermitage should suddenly go mad, if the paintings of all schools and masters should suddenly break loose from the nails, should fuse, intermingle, and fill the air of the rooms with futuristic howling and colours in violent agitation, the result then would be something like Dante's Comedy." Osip Mandelstam, "Converation with Dante”
― Osip Mandelstam, The Selected Poems

“For us, all that's left is kisses
tattered as the little bees
that die when they leave the hive.”
― Osip Mandelstam, The Selected Poems

“I am wearied to death with life.
There’s nothing it has that I want,
but I celebrate my naked earth,
there’s no other world to descant.”
― Osip Mandelstam, The Selected Poems