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)