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Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, Canada
My virtue is that I say what I think, my vice that what I think doesn't amount to much.

Sunday, January 15, 2017

Osip Mandelstam


Osip Mandelstam, was a Russian writer who was arrested under Stalin and exiled in the 1930s. Sentenced to a labor camp in Siberia, he died en route at a transit camp, aged forty-seven.

Take for joy from my outstretched palms
A little honey and a little sun
As we were implored by the bees of Proserpine.

No one can loose a boat that is unmoored.
No one can hear the shadow shod in fur.
One cannot track down fear in the dense forest of life.

We are left only with kisses,
Prickling like tiny fuzzy bees
Which die, having left the hive.

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