This poem is taken from PN Review 1, Volume 4 Number 1, October - December 1977.
Two PoemsMANDELSTAM, ON DANTE
1
Russian Jew, for you
To re-think Dante, dissolve
Into fluids that four-square slab
Of Christendom, meant a resolve
(So it must seem) to taunt
And tempt the unsteadied Gentile,
As it might be me, to act
In nettled Stalin's style.
Dangerous, these corrosives
You handle. First and last
Powder the graven image!
'Jew' means 'iconoclast'.
Can we believe the impulse
Consciously suicidal?
Or was the play of mind
Lordly, the interest idle?
...
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