Translation:Tristia/Sisters heaviness and tenderness – your signs are the same

by Osip Mandelstam

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Sisters heaviness and tenderness – your signs are the same.
Bees and wasps are sucking the heavy rose.
Man is dying. The heated sand is chilling,
And yesterday's sun is carried away on a black stretcher.

Ah, heavy honeycombs and tender nets,
It is easier to lift a stone than to repeat your name!
I have a single care left in this world,
A golden care – to overcome the burden of time.

I drink the misty air like dark water
Time is ploughed, and a rose was the soil.
In the slow whirlpool the heavy and tender roses,
Heaviness and tenderness are entwined into twin wreaths.

1920