A flame is in my blood

Portrait of Osip Mandelstam
Osip Mandelstam 1891–1938

A flame is in my blood burning dry life, to the bone. I do not sing of stone, now, I sing of wood.

It is light and coarse: made of a single spar, the oak's deep heart, and the fisherman's oar.

Drive them deep, the piles: hammer them in tight, around wooden Paradise, where everything is light.

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