MANDELSTAM

The night calves a meager bit of meat, measured in kilos, from the suddenly bright hay.

Your sadness is a thimble wrapped in a tiny tourniquet by the gauze

Once woven on an inch-loom during a proclamation of great love.

In the Saint Petersburg beneath Saint Petersburg, it is twilight all the time.

Robes so heavy with the heft of snow, such important jewels, no one can move

Without a retinue, a company. Bedouins or wolfhounds beneath stars.

At the sanatorium, your last letter written on a crag of paper asking for warm

Cloth (could it be made?) of cypress light. Even now, it is too cold to be alive.

Heart seized twice, and empathy would make the evening hollow, even by its swathed

And folding wing. Oblivion—a notice to your brother on a green brochure, in time

                                        Arrived by hand to hand to hand.