toma, para el goce, de mis manos::for joy's sake, from my hands
Toma, para el goce, de mis manos
Un poco de sol y algo de miel
Como nos ordenaron las abejas de Perséfone.
No se puede soltar una barca a la deriva
Ni sentir en la piel la sombra de una bota
Ni vencer el temor de la dormida vida.
Sólo nos quedan los besos
Felpudos como pequeñas abejas
Que mueren al salir de la colmena.
Ellos murmuran en la transparente espesura de la noche,
Su patria: el profundo bosque de Taiget
Su alimento: el tiempo, la menta y la pulmonaria.
Toma, pues, para tu goce, mi regalo salvaje
Este seco y burdo collar
De abejas muertas: la miel que se convierte en sol.
Osip Mandelstam (Varsovia, 1891-Vladivostok, Siberia, 1938)
La piedra en la historia
Traducción Víctor Toledo
Leviatán, Buenos Aires (2014)
For joy’s sake, from my hands,
take some honey and some sun,
as Persephone’s bees told us.
Not to be freed, the unmoored boat.
Not to be heard, fur-booted shadows.
Not to be silenced, life’s dark terrors.
Now we only have kisses,
dry and bristling like bees,
that die when they leave the hive.
Rustling in clear glades of night,
in the dense forests of Taygetos,
time feeds them; honeysuckle; mint.
For joy’s sake take my strange gift,
this simple thread of dead, dried bees,
turned honey in the sun.
Translation by A.S. Kline
Note from the translator A.S. Kline: "Persephone, the Goddess of the Underworld as an aspect of the Triple Goddess, equates to the Great Goddess of Crete, to whom the bees, honey and the hive were sacred. Wax and honey were products of the goddess, and symbolise poetry and art, the products of artifice, made by the craft of the bees, and embodied in them. Persephone’s bees are therefore the songs of the darkness, of dark times. Taygetos, the mountain range above Sparta (extending from Arcadia to Taenarum, separating Laconia and Messenia) sacred to Apollo and Artemis (the God of Art, and the incarnation of the Great Goddess respectively) produced a darker honey than Hymettos near Athens. The Russian state is equated to Sparta and its militaristic mode of governance. The dried, dead bees are the poems, strung on a thread of spirit, that, when they leave the lips, ‘die’ into the stillness of the word."
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