Do not compare: what lives is incomparable.

I felt a a kind of tender fear

as I took on the plains' equality

and the wide sky became my malady.

I summoned the air, my serving man,

expected from him services or news,

made ready to set out, sail on the arc

of expeditions that could never start.

Where I have most sky I am glad to roam,

and a bright sadness will not let me leave

Voronezh and its adolescent hills

for the clear human hills of Tuscany.

Copyright Credit: ''Do not compare: what lives is incomparable'' 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)