Silentium

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She has not yet been born:
 she is music and word,
 and therefore the untorn,
 fabric of what is stirred.  

 Silent the ocean breathes.
 Madly day’s glitter roams.
 Spray of pale lilac foams,
 in a bowl of grey-blue leaves.

 May my lips rehearse
 the primordial silence,
 like a note of crystal clearness,
 sounding, pure from birth!

 Stay as foam Aphrodite – Art –
 and return, Word, where music begins:
 and, fused with life’s origins,
 be ashamed heart, of heart!

© Osip Emilevich Mandelstam