I was washing at night out in the yard

I was washing at night out in the yard—

the heavens glowing with rough stars.

A star-beam like salt upon an axe,

the water barrel brimful and cold.

A padlock makes the gate secure,

and conscience gives sternness to the earth—

hard to find a standard anywhere

purer than the truth of new-made cloth.

A star melts in the barrel like salt,

and the ice-cold winter is blacker still,

death is more pure, disaster saltier

and earth more truthful and more terrible.

Copyright Credit: ''I was washing at night out in the yard'' 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)