It is given to mortals to love, to recognize,
to make sounds move to their fingers,
but I have forgotten what I wanted to say
and a bodiless thought returns to the palace of shadows.
The Transparent One still speaks, but of nothing.
Still a swallow, a friend known as a girl, Antigone.
The reverberations of Stygian remembrance
burn like a black ice on one’s lips.
From "I Have Forgotten the Word I Wanted to Say" by Osip Mandelstam. Read the complete poem here.
Passage to the Underworld, Joachim Patinir, 1515-1524
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