Provisionally, then, and secretive,
I speak a truth whose time is not:

It lives in love and the pain of love,
In sweat, and the sky’s playful vacancy.

A whisper, then, a purgatorial prayer,
A testament of one man, in one place:

Our bright abyss is also — and simply — happiness,
And this expanding, live-demanding space
A lifetime home for us.

— Osip Mandelstam
(March 9, 1937)