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

* * * 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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