Sisters heaviness and tenderness – your signs are the same

Sisters heaviness and tenderness — your signs are the same… ⧼written by⧽ Osip Mandelstam

From Tristia. Translated from Russian by D. Smirnov-Sadovsky. In Russian: Сёстры тяжесть и нежность

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Sisters heaviness and tenderness — your signs are the same.
Bees and wasps are sucking the heavy rose.
Man is dying. The heated sand is chilling,
And yesterday's sun is carried away on a black stretcher.

Ah, heavy honeycombs and tender nets,
It is easier to lift a stone than to repeat your name!
I have a single care left in this world,
A golden care — to overcome the burden of time.

I drink the misty air like dark water
Time is ploughed, and a rose was the soil.
In the slow whirlpool the heavy and tender roses,
Heaviness and tenderness are entwined into twin wreaths.

1920

Notes

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© Dmitri Smirnov, Translation. Can be reproduced if non-commercial.

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Other translations

• Heaviness and tenderness - sisters: the same features... © John Joubert
• Heaviness and Tenderness- you look the same... Translated by A. S. Kline
• Sisters - Heaviness and Tenderness - you look the same… The same translation – with no indication of the translator’s name
• Sisters heaviness and tenderness, your traits are one... No indication of the translator’s name
• Sweetness and tenderness – like sisters alike are your marks… Tranlsation by Ilya Shambat

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