By Osip Mandelshtam

(1911)

Today is a bad day:
The grasshopper choir sleeps,
More morbid than tomb plates -
Are cliffs' dusky canopies.

The arrows that flash, chime;
Oracular crows scream...
Now moments, now more, fly;
I'm seeing a bad dream.

Edge open each known thing!
Demolish the Earth's jails!
Ferociously sing, hymn,
Bronze riling of mysteries!

O, pendulum of souls -
Is strict, swinging deaf, sure,
And wildly a doom knocks
For us, on a barred door…