Insomnia. Homer. Taut Canvas. Poem by Osip Emilevich Mandelstam

Insomnia. Homer. Taut Canvas.

Rating: 2.9


Insomnia. Homer. Taut canvas.
Half the catalogue of ships is mine:
that flight of cranes, long stretched-out line,
that once rose, out of Hellas.

To an alien land, like a phalanx of cranes –
Foam of the gods on the heads of kings –
Where do you sail? What would the things
of Troy, be to you, Achaeans, without Helen?

The sea, or Homer – all moves by love’s glow.
Which should I hear? Now Homer is silent,
and the Black Sea thundering its oratory, turbulent,
and, surging, roars against my pillow.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Fabrizio Frosini 14 June 2015

Note: The catalogue of ships appears in Homer’s Iliad Book II (equivalent to counting sheep for the insomniac!) Hellas is Greece, and the Achaeans are the Greeks journeying to the Trojan War. Homer compares the clans to the flocks of geese, cranes, or long-necked swans that gather by the River Cayster in Asia Minor. Troy is near the entrance to the Hellespont, the gateway to the Black Sea. The abduction of Helen was the cause of the War: Paris’s love for her the root of the conflict.

5 0 Reply
Brian Jani 22 May 2014

Osip you sure know your words well

0 0 Reply
READ THIS POEM IN OTHER LANGUAGES
Close
Error Success