TWILIGHT OF FREEDOM

Credit: Pexels

"Let us praise, brothers, the 

twilight of freedom,

this great darkening year.

Into these seething night waters

an unwieldy forest of snares has 

been lowered.

You are rising in such hollow times

O sun, judge and people.

Let us praise this fateful burden,

which in tears the people’s leader has taken on.

Let us praise the gloomy weight of power,

its unbearable burden,

for time, anyone with a heart must hear

how your boat sinks to the bottom.

We have bound the swallows into battle legions,

and can no longer see the sun,

yet all the elements are moving,

stirring and twittering,

dense twilight through the snares.

We can no longer see the sun…,

but the earth is afloat…

So come on, let’s give it one last try:

one great, clumsy creaking pull of the oar.

The earth is afloat. Let’s give our all

as the plough cleaves through the ocean.

We will remember, even in the cold of lethe

that for us the earth was worth ten heavens."

Osip Mandelstam