Alone I stare into the frost’s white face. 
It’s going nowhere, and I—from nowhere. 
Everything ironed flat, pleated without a wrinkle: 
Miraculous, the breathing plain.    

Meanwhile the sun squints at this starched poverty—
The squint itself consoled, at ease . . . 
The ten-fold forest almost the same . . . 
And snow crunches in the eyes, innocent, like clean bread.   

--Osip Mandelstam (trans. by John High/Matvei Yankelevich)

January 16, 1937