She has not yet been born:
she is music and word,
and therefore the un-torn,
fabric of what is stirred.
 
Silent the ocean breathes.
Madly day’s glitter roams.
Spray of pale lilac foams,
in a bowl of grey-blue leaves.
 
May my lips rehearse
the primordial silence,
like a note of crystal clearness,
sounding, pure from birth!
 
Stay as foam Aphrodite – Art –
and return, Word, where music begins:
and, fused with life’s origins,
be ashamed heart, of heart!
 
Osip Mandelstam