Kama

1

How dark it is for the eye on the Kama river,
When the towns stand on oaken knees.

Decked out in spiderwebs, beard upon beard,
The blazing spruce runs and grows younger in the water.

The water heaves the oars,  a hundred and four,
Upstream and downstream, to Kazan and Cherdyn.

So I passed along the river, a curtain at the window,
A curtain at the window, and my head on fire,

And five nights beside me my wife did not sleep,
Five nights escorting our three armed guards.

 

2

How dark it is for the eye on the Kama river,
When the towns stand on oaken knees.

Decked out in spiderwebs, beard upon beard,
The blazing spruce runs and grows younger in the water.

The water heaves the oars, a hundred and four,
Upstream and downstream, to Kazan and Cherdyn.

Out of the great dark masses, the scrub burnt away —
The flock of the timber machine-gun gathers speed.

On the Tobol they shout. The Ob stands on a raft.
And a mile of the river is hoisted up high.

 

3

I watched, moving away, towards a conifered East,
The Kama in spate, rushing at the buoy.

I wanted to flake layers off the mountain with fire —
but I could not salt the woods in time.

And I wanted to settle here — do you see?
Here in the long-lived Urals, where the people are,

And I wanted to hide this insane river-smoothness
In the protecting folds of my long trench coat.

 

Osip Mandelstam, 1935
Translation, Keith Sands, 2011