Sisters

Osip Mandelstam

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Sisters - Heaviness and Tenderness- you look the same.
Wasps and bees both suck the heavy rose.
Man dies, and the hot sand cools again.
Carried off on a black stretcher, yesterday’s sun goes.

Oh, honeycombs’ heaviness, nets’ tenderness,
it’s easier to lift a stone than to say your name!
I have one purpose left, a golden purpose,
how, from time’s weight, to free myself again.

I drink the turbid air like a dark water.
The rose was earth; time, ploughed from underneath.
Woven, the heavy, tender roses, in a slow vortex,
the roses, heaviness and tenderness, in a double-wreath.

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Comments1
  • uxslawrence

    Just read a poem by Osip Mandelstam, really dug deep beneath the surface for me. Sadness and beauty, life and death, all wrapped up together. Dude had a way with words. Heavier than my regular school stuff, but I'm glad my teacher asked us to read this. Makes you think, ya know?