Black Earth
Too black, too much indulged, living in clover,
all little withers, all air, all charity,
all crumbling, all massing in a choir—
damp clods of soil, my land and liberty...
With early plowing it is black to blueness,
and unarmed labor here is glorified—
a thousand hills plowed open wide to say it—
circumference is not all circumscribed.
And yet the earth is blunder and obtuseness—
no swaying it, even on bended knee:
its rotting flute gives sharpness to the hearing,
its morning clarinet harrows the ear.
How sweet the fat earth's pressure on the plow,
how the spring turns the steppe to its advantage...
my greetings then, black earth: be strong, look out—
black eloquence of wordlessness in labor.
''Black Earth'' by Osip Mandelstam, translated by Peter France, from Black Earth, translation copyright © 2021 by Peter France. Compilation copyright © 2021 by New Directions Publishing. Use by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Source: Black Earth (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2021)