Rough Draft

Abstract

Rough Draft Osip Mandelstam (bio) Translated by Christian Wiman (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Alder in Spring courtesy of Roman Loranc [End Page 247] Provisionally, then, and secretive,I speak a truth whose time is not: It lives in love and the pain of love,In sweat, and the sky's playful vacancy. A whisper, then, a purgatorial prayer,A testament of one man, in one place: Our bright abyss is also—and simply—happiness,And this expanding, life-demanding spaceA lifetime home for us. (9 March 1937) [End Page 248] Osip Mandelstam Osip Mandelstam is one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. Most of his work was unpublished at the time of his death, which likely occurred at a transit camp in Siberia in 1938 (he was never seen again). A new selection of his poems, translated by Christian Wiman, is forthcoming from Ecco in the spring of 2012. Christian Wiman Christian Wiman's most recent book is Every Riven Thing (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010). He is the editor of Poetry. Two books are forthcoming in 2012, a selected poems of Osip Mandelstam and (with Don Share) The Open Door: One Hundred Poets, One Hundred Years of Poetry. christianwiman@poetrymagazine.org Copyright © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press