Extruder

     Oh, how I wish,
     Perceived by no one,
     To fly after a beam
     To where I'm nothing.

     You! Shine in a circle -
     No better fate -
     And study from a star
     How light is made.

     And to you I'd like
     To say what I now whisper,
     That in a whisper I deliver
     You, child, to light.

 

 
    

     
     This is for Spotlight,
     expelling so many from
     internal exile with ex-
     traordinary gentleness. 

Osip Mandelstam
Vorónezh Notebooks
  81
  27 March 1937
Andrew Davis
  translation
New York Review Books, 2016©