You're still alive, you're not alone yet - she's still beside you, with her empty hands, and a joy reaches you both across immense plains through mists and hunger and flying snow.

Opulent poverty, regal indigence! Live in it calmly, be at peace. Blessed are these days, these nights, and innocent in the labor's singing sweetness.

Miserable is the man who runs from a dog in his shadow, whom a wind reaps at the knees, and poor the one who holds out his rag of life to beg mercy of a shadow.

Voronezh, January 1937

(Translated from the Russian by Clarence Brown and W.S. Merwin)

Note: I was reading this poem like a mantra on the subway yesterday, when I looked up and saw few other folks in the compartment clutching self-help books, fashion magazines, or mystery novels - the one that come in paperback with flashy covers. And I was happy for the joy - partly bestowed by the "she", the muse figure - of this poem, by the great Mandelstam.

Also, if I were ever to learn Russian, it would be to read Dostoevsky's "White Nights" and the Holy Trinity (Mandelstam, Ahkmatova, and Tsvetaeva) in the original.

I've often wanted to learn Spanish to read Borges's poems in the original. I love his short fiction, but in some of his poems he breaks free of his chains of intellect and speaks so powerfully.

Do you know if there is any translation available of Arseny Tarkovsky in English? I've been looking for a long time.

BB