Insomnia. Homer.

By Osip Mandelstam, translated by Rebekah Spearman.

Insomnia. Homer. Sails unfurled.
I’ve read to the middle of the list of ships.
What a long brood, what a train of cranes
That some time once set off from Greece.

Like a wedge of cranes to foreign shores
God’s foam forms on the heads of kings.
Where are you sailing? If not for Helen,
What’s Troy to you, Achaean men?

And the sea and Homer—all moves by love.
Which should I heed? See, Homer falls silent,
And the black sea grumbles thundering
heavy words that creep to my pillow.