Speaking In Tongues
Guided by Voices

Osip Mandelstam

Translated by Boris Leyvi

Insomnia, Homer, Sails - to winds tight jibs release.

The list of boats I quit, half to remain unread:

That elongated brood, the craning train that fled

Sometime ago above the Ancient Greece.

Alike the wedge of cranes, into the foreign land:

Upon the royal heads the crowns of god-sent foam:

For Helen were it not, where do you head from home,

What would Troy mean alone to you, Achaean men?

The sea and Homer, all - by love moves and endears.

Whom shall I listen to? Old Homer wouldn't say:

Apprising, the Black Sea is humming on its way,

With horrid crash at my headrest appears: