Edward

Foreword, by Nadezhda Mandelshtam
Foreword, by Donald Davie
Translator's Preface
Introduction, by Donald Rayfield

from Stone (1913, 1916, 1923 and 1928)
--The careful muffled sound
--Suddenly, from the dimly lit hall
--To read only children's books
--On pale-blue enamel
--What shall I do with the body I've been given
--A sadness beyond words
--Words are unnecessary
--Silentium
--Ear-drums stretch their sensitive sail
--Like the shadow of sudden clouds
--I grew, rustling like a reed
--Sultry dusk covers the couch
--How slowly the horses move
--Light sows a meagre beam
--The sea-shell
--I hate the light
--In the haze your image
--No, not the moon, but a bright clock-face
--The traveller
--The casino
--The Lutheran
--Hagia Sophia
--Notre Dame
--Poisoned bread, satiated air
--Horses' hooves ... The clatter
--There are orioles in the woods
--Nature is Roman, and mirrored in Rome
--Sleeplessness. Homer. Taut sails
--Herds of horses gaily neigh or graze

Unpublished in the Struve/Filippov editions
--Newly reaped ears

Two poems first published by Struve/Filippov, 1964
--The hunters have trapped you
--The old men of Euripides, an abject throng

from Tristia (1922)
--How the splendour of these veils and of this dress
--We shall die in transparent Petropolis
--This night is irredeemable
--Disbelieving the miracle of resurrection
--Out of the bottle the stream of golden honey poured so slowly
--Spring's transparent-grey asphodels
--Tristia
--Sisters: heaviness and tenderness bear the same insignia
--Return to the incestuous lap
--When Psyche -- life -- descends among shades
--I have forgotten the word I wanted to say
--For the sake of delight
--Here is the pyx, like a golden sun
--Because I had to let go of your arms
--When the city moon looks out on the streets
--When, on my lips a singing name, I stepped
--I like the grey silences under the arches

from Poems (1928)
--I was washing at night in the courtyard
--To some, winter is arrack and a blue-eyed punch
--Rosy foam of fatigue on his sensual lips
--As the leaven swells
--I climbed into the tousled hayloft
--My time
--Whoever finds a horseshoe
--1 January 1924

Two poems published in Novy Mir (1931 and 1932)
--Armenia
--Batyushkov

Poems published posthumously
--Self-portrait
--I was only in a childish way connected with the established order
--Help me, O Lord, to get through this night
--For the resounding glory of eras to come
--I drink to the blossoming epaulette
--Impressionism
--Ariosto
--We exist, without sensing our country beneath us
--The body of King Arshak is unwashed
--Your narrow shoulders are to redden under scourges
--Black earth
--Yes, I'm lying in the earth, moving my lips
--You took away my seas and running jumps and sky
--My country conversed with me
--For those hundred-carat ingots, Roman nights
--A wave advances -- one wave breaking another's backbone
--I shall perform a smoky rite
--I shall not return my borrowed dust
--I can't make sense of today
--Like a belated present
--I would sing of him who shifted the axis of the world
--You still haven't died, you're still not alone
--I look the frost in the face, alone
--Oh, these suffocating, asthmatic spaces of the steppes
--Plagued by their miraculous and all-engulfing hunger
--Don't compare: anyone alive is matchless
--What has contended with oxide and alloys
--The mounds of human heads disappear into the distance
--Listening, listening to the early ice
--A little boy, his red face shining like a lamp
--Where can I put myself this January?
--Like Rembrandt, martyr of light and dark
--Breaks of the rounded bays, shingle, blue
--I sing when my throat is damp, my soul dry
--Eyes once keener than a sharpened scythe
--Armed with the eyesight of narrow wasps
--I am plunged into a lion's den, a fort
--If our enemies take me
--Life's reticulations loosen, madness looms
--This is what I want most of all
--This azure island was exalted by its potters
--As if words were not enough
--I raise this greenness to my lips
--With her delightful uneven way of walking

Notes and Acknowledgements
Further Reading