Poet's Choice

See how I'm blinded but strengthened,

surrendering to the least of the roots?

Are my eyes not blown out

by the exploding trees?

The little frogs are rolled up in their voices,

drops of mercury, huddled in a ball.

The twigs are turning into branches, and the fallow ground

is a mirage of milk.

Written in circumstances of exile and terror, the poem triumphantly makes a home of the Earth.

(The poems here are from "The Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam," translated by Clarence Brown and W.S. Merwin. New York Review of Books. Translation copyright 1973.)