And I Was Alive

And I was alive in the blizzard

of the blossoming pear,

Myself I stood in the storm of

the bird-cherry tree.

It was all leaflike and

starshower, unerring, self-

shattering

power,

And it was all aimed at me.

What is this dire delight

flowering fleeing always

earth?

What is being? What is truth?

Blossoms rupture and rapture

the air,

All hover and hammer,

Time intensified and time

intolerable, sweetness raveling

rot.

It is now. It is not.

Osip Mandelstam

(May 4, 1937)