Do not compare: what lives is incomparable.
Do not compare: what lives is incomparable.
I felt a a kind of tender fear
as I took on the plains' equality
and the wide sky became my malady.
I summoned the air, my serving man,
expected from him services or news,
made ready to set out, sail on the arc
of expeditions that could never start.
Where I have most sky I am glad to roam,
and a bright sadness will not let me leave
Voronezh and its adolescent hills
for the clear human hills of Tuscany.
''Do not compare: what lives is incomparable'' by Osip Mandelstam, translated by Peter France, from Black Earth, translation copyright © 2021 by Peter France. Compilation copyright © 2021 by New Directions Publishing. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Source: Black Earth (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2021)