OSIP MANDELSTAM(1891-1938)

What we owe to

those like you?

To a genius destined

not to soar, but

be made to bend

and bend, then

broken on barbwire?

What do we owe?

That we read you.

You have a voice

that speaks beyond

the long years, the

suffering and death.

Listening to it we

can, perhaps, hear

in the background,

weakly, those of

your fellow dead who

are otherwise silent,

having experienced

a greater death.

A poet speaks

for his age to

all ages to come

or becomes dust.

You are blood

on snow.

12.11.2017